A Ninja's Tale
by raidensokwl
Summary: For Naruto, strange new lands, new people, even stranger abilities with the vast majority of those people is nothing more than another day in the office. Although by far, this has become the strangest day in the office for him. How is he supposed to handle all of this? Easy enough to answer, one step at a time.
1. The Beginning of Something New

**Disclaimer: Right, the standard stuff, I don't own Naruto or Fairy Tail, I wish I did, because they're both awesome (apart from their rather child friendly themes considering my now wholly advanced age, but hey, whatcha gonna do?) Well, let this Naruto/Fairy Tail x-over begin anew!**

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><p>"Your majesty," A very short and elderly man with a strangely shaped nose, large eyes and horn-shaped eyebrows greeted with a respective bow, "I have news of great importance." He finished off as he attracted the attention of the occupants of the Royal Hall inside the Palace of the Edolas Kingdom.<p>

King Faust, the man he served underneath turned his head and his stare in the direction of his most senior advisor and wizened man, "Byro, what is it?" His voice was cold and held no warmth within its inflection. In fact, it seemed as if Byro was more likely to be punished if whatever news that was being brought to him wasn't of great importance as he said. He was a busy man, and he didn't like having his time wasted by petty problems.

Byro snapped his head up from the bow he was in as he made his way closer towards the throne, his long noble robes he wore dragging behind him. Fear entered him as he felt the look that his ruler was giving him, just because he was essentially the second-in-command of the kingdom in case anything ever happened to his majesty, it didn't mean that he wouldn't suffer for his impertinence. His majesty had specifically ordered to not be disturbed for the important meeting that he was in now.

The aged man cleared his throat somewhat unsteadily before coming to a halt in front of the throne, "It's about the Anima sir."

Faust's eyes narrowed slightly, "What about it?" Another magical collection wasn't to be scheduled so soon. They had already collected magic from Edolas' counterpart. Doing again so soon might attract unwanted attention from whatever authorities that governed Earthland.

A glimmer came to Byro's eyes. He knew very well that the next bit of information would have his majesty's attention. So much that it would take precedence over this meeting, as important as it was, "We've managed to triangulate it sir."

Faust had a blank look on his face. Not because he was surprised or anything, no, more along the lines he didn't know what Byro was speaking about, "Be more specific fool."

"The _source._" Byro had a gleeful expression on his face, "We've managed to triangulate the home dimension of the source!"

The other occupants of the room had confused expressions on their faces as they looked around at each others' faces. It seemed they were the only ones that didn't know what this source that was being spoken off was.

Faust on the other hand, on his face was one emotion that any of his subjects had never had the honour of seeing on his face, surprise and shock, "Is it possible?" He breathed out. It was so silent that one had to strain their ears somewhat to hear his words.

Byro nodded his head in a gleeful manner, "It is your majesty."

Faust immediately turned his attention to the group of assembled advisors, "Leave." Came the silent order as the elderly king started stroking his beard in thought. The implications of the news he had received was profound in so many ways that it could effect his kingdom.

"Your majesty?" Sugarboy, one of Faust Army officials let out in a confused tone, "We have yet to go through all the details about the meeting." He dutifully pointed out.

The tall, white haired king merely waved off the point, "We can do it another time. This takes precedence." Sugarboy was about to call out once more but stopped when he felt a stiff glare from his king, "Are you refusing to accept my order captain?"

Sugarboy retreated into his seat, "No your majesty. Forgive my impudence." He apologised with a bow of the head.

Faust nodded once more, "Very well. I believe I told you all to leave now didn't I?" He rhetorically asked as his eyes panned over everyone in the room. The advisors and officials merely nodded their heads as they stood up before saluting him and quickly exiting the room they had been previously occupying.

Byro let something of a smirk come to his face as he felt some glares come from some of the officials. Once more, this proved that he stood heads and shoulders above the rest when it came to his majesty's good graces.

Faust relaxed in his chair as he looked at his advisor, "After all these years, we've finally managed to find it." He said more to himself than anyone. He rubbed his bearded chin as his sunken eyes looked ahead of him in a daze, "Can the Anima extract it?"

"If we didn't have a sample of the source itself, then we would be hard-pressed to extract the source from its home dimension." Byron informed the man as he continued to stand in front of the throne, never taking his eyes of the king who sat upon it, "Although the only thing we have to worry about is that we have to use the sample in all of its entirety to get a lock on the source itself." He finished off with a rather visible look of displeasure on his face. The energy that compromised of the sample that came from the source was something he had never seen before in his life. It didn't seem to be like any source of magical energy he had ever seen and it was more concentrated to the point it could power their devices with little trouble.

He had his doubts about using it to try and pull the source of this sample from its home dimension as it would mean Edolas would lose a large source of energy, but if the sample was nothing more than a sliver of the source, then Edolas would be independent for years to come.

As he sat upon his noble throne, a wry grin of amusement came across his face, "Another dimension? I would have found the thought rather preposterous." Edolas itself wasn't a different dimension from Earthland, it was just a parallel universe. Something completely different from a dimension all together.

"We can never doubt the will of magic your Majesty. With this knowledge, we can safely assume they maybe hundreds, nay, thousands of other separate dimensions from our very own." Byro exclaimed, the look off glee on his face was visible to anyone other than the blindest of people, "The possibilities are purely endless." And with that conclusion, one could also say that the resources themselves were endless in their own way.

A dismissive hand waved itself in front of Faust himself, "Yes, yes," He drawled in a bored tone of voice, "You gave me this lecture when the Anima picked up and extracted a sample of the energy." He said in a bored tone of voice. Byro had and served his uses, but he was a nuisance at other times. A wide grin, a wide maniacal grin came to his face, "A whole new dimension...all at _my _disposal!" Truly the Anima was a godsend, well, it was his to be exact, and therefore, he was god. He had to be.

His sharp eyes immediately glared down at Byro, "Then what are you doing babbling and wasting time here for? Activate the Anima at once and bring it to me!"

The short old man jumped slightly at the sudden change in tone and mood from the king of the realm, "Y-Yes your Majesty, I understand." He stuttered before immediately turning on his heels and quickly making his way towards the exit.

"And Byro," The Chief of Staff came to a halt at the grand door that served as the exit and entrance to the Throne Room, "It would be prudent to not fail me. I would hate to find someone else as useful as you after your resignation."

Byro's blood ran cold, "I-I will not fail you your majesty. This I swear."

"Good." Faust said with a slight nod, "As you were." He finished off as he watched Byro exit the Throne Room in a nervous haste that looked out of sorts on his normally reserved Chief of Staff, leaving him on his own as he was before.

Fear was a great motivator when it came to it.

A malicious grin slowly etched itself onto his face as his hands rubbed together, "Eternal magic. All within the grasp of my hand."

A chuckle full of mal intent rang throughout the Throne Room, the sounds of laughter reverberating off the Throne Rooms walls.

XxX

(Another Place)

"Boss," A slightly grown up Konohamaru said slowly as he looked around the village they were located in, "You're just a maelstrom for destruction aren't you?" Well, it used to be a village. Now it was definitely something else.

At thirteen, Konohamaru hadn't changed much from the bratty twelve year old that he had been just a little underneath a year ago that he was. He had somehow managed to stop himself from wearing the scarf that he always wore no matter where he meant and replaced it with wearing a grey and black zip-up jacket, dark grey pants and black shinobi sandals that were more like boots than sandals. Tied around his shorter brown hair was a black Konoha headband.

Naruto stood next to Konohamaru with something of a sheepish expression on his face, "Come on Kono, that's a bit mean to say isn't it? It's not like I meant it or anything." He tried to defend himself as he observed the destruction he had brought to the area.

Konohamaru just had to turn and give his self-proclaimed boss a deadpan look, "An entire fishing village is gone." He pointed out as his arm panned over the wreckage of the village. There wasn't a single building standing anymore.

"Well..." Naruto trailed off as he tried to think of something to say in his defence, "Remember that this village isn't exactly a village anyway. It was deserted therefore it can't really be counted as a village in the first place." The blonde ninja said, confidence in the inflection of his voice at the reason and logic he had just showed to the younger boy.

The blonde haired shinobi stood next to Konohamaru. He was dressed in a black jacket zip up jacket with orange sleeves, orange pants and the same black boot-like sandals that Konohomaru wore. Naruto's right arm was covered in bandages to hide its discolourment due to the fact that it was an artificial one that was created from the cells of the Shodaime Hokage. His headband was tied around his forehead as usual to try and keep back his bangs and on his right sleeve was a red armband that had the spiral Uzumaki symbol.

The younger boy beside him had twitching eyebrows as he stared up at the taller teen, "What kind of dumbass logic is that boss? The Rokudaime isn't going to like that." He emphasized by wailing his arms around in a frantic manner, "This was supposed to be a simple mission to take out a group of bandits!"

Naruto laughed in amusement as he linked his hands behind his hair, "Well, we took care of them didn't we? Plus anyway, as unfortunate as it is, the village itself was nothing more than a victim of collateral damage." There seemed to be a lot of that when it came to missions involving Naruto.

"Tell that to Kakashi-sama."

"I will, don't worry about it. He'll let me off because I'm his favourite student and everything."

A sly grin came onto the young Sarutobi's face as he continued to look up in Naruto's direction, "I thought that was Sasuke?"

"...Shut up Konohamaru. Nobody likes a smart-ass." The older ninja grumbled in return before shaking his head and turning on his heel, "Come on. Let's make our way back to Konoha. I haven't had ramen in days." He finished off as he ran off into the distance as he made his way towards the treeline.

Konohamaru stumbled a bit before hurrying up to try and catch up to Naruto, "H-Hey, don't just leave me alone here!" He yelled after the ninja as he followed suite and ran after him.

It had been nearly eight months since the end of the Fourth Shinobi War. During that time, a lot had happened. The Allied Shinobi force had ended up winning what was essentially a pyrrhic victory, that devastated the five villages in terms of manpower. After the war, all the villages rebuilt themselves although after fighting together in the war to save the world from the delusions of a mad man, it seemed peace would finally fall upon the Elemental Nations.

Unfortunately that wasn't to be.

The reason being that the war had only included the Five Great Nations. The Continent was composed of numerous hidden villages and even if the Great Nations had fought to preserve the free will of mankind in general and had suffered for it, that didn't mean the other nations that hadn't taken part in the war would just sit back and allow a new world order to appear.

Taking advantage of the fact that the super-power nations of the world had been devastated in a war that had weakened their forces substantially, the other hidden villages made moves themselves to gain influence and power, to replace the old nations and become super-powers themselves. Naruto couldn't really fault them for trying to take advantage of the situation, how could he? They were ninja, they saw and opportunity to gain something and they took it.

He remembered something's from his academy days about good ninja being the ones to take beneficial opportunities when they saw him.

Thus came to the current state of the world. The original five powers, although weakened were still not a force to be trifled with. With the fact that they didn't have their usual military numbers to call upon, the Allied forces only elected to purse a defensive war until they were able to rebuild themselves to a manageable amount of manpower. The other villages noted this but didn't take action, the smart ones that did note this did take action and also made their own alliances between the smaller villages.

That had been five months ago.

This new war, the Fifth Shinobi War as it has become to be known was now grinding to a halt. With the Great Nations having rebuilt themselves to a suitable degree, the original point of the war was now pointless and even if it took months, the war would have resulted in the overall victory of the Allied forces. Even if the smaller villages outnumbered them, the Allied forces had elite forces that also included recent war veterans.

Victory wasn't a matter of how, but when.

With that knowledge, envoys that represented the Allied forces had been making contacts with the villages themselves and offering peace talks. Some refused and the more smart ones accepted, and the war's end was now in sight, even if it was still covered somewhat in shadows.

As Naruto and Konohamaru made their way back towards Konoha, a flash of lightning and the following sound of the boom of thunder attracted their attention to the sky, "That's weird..." The youngest of the two Konoha ninja mumbled as he noticed the gathering of clouds in the sky, "Wasn't it just clear skies just a couple of seconds ago?" He queried as he watched dark, grey clouds gather in the sky.

Naruto couldn't help but agree with Konohamaru how weird it was, "I didn't even notice anything that looked like there was going to be rain." But then again, he wasn't a meteorologist so maybe he didn't notice because he didn't have the full breadth of knowledge or expertise to notice the right signs for things like thunder and rain.

Konohamaru groaned in annoyance as he increased his speed a little bit, "I didn't even bring my rain coat or anything like that." He said with a slight childish pout of annoyance on his face.

Naruto chuckled as he grinned, "A little rain never hurt anybody!" He said as he lead the way, even when he jumped into the sky to land on a tree branch and began tree hopping.

"Maybe, but I don't want to get wet." The young Sarutobi muttered as he followed Naruto's lead and took to the tree tops themselves. He felt much more at home among the trees than the ground. He guessed he lived up to the 'monkey' part of his last name.

Lightning and thunder flashed and boomed in the sky once more. At first, it was intermittent but soon enough rain started falling to the ground as the heavens' wept. The leafy canopy of the trees provided limited protection to the rain for Konohamaru and Naruto as they continued to hop from one branch to the other.

Since Naruto was leading the way, Konohamaru travelled just a few feet behind him and was thus able to notice something that was off about Naruto. At first, he didn't seem to believe it as he shook his head to make sure that he wasn't seeing things, after all, one of the bandits had managed to get a good hit on him on the head and thus this could have been nothing more than the result of a concussion.

But even when he had shaken his head, he noticed what he seeing was quite real, even after checking to make sure that this wasn't done by a genjutsu cast on him or something like that. Thus, he had to bring it up, "Uh boss?"

Naruto merely turned his head slightly to the side to look behind him at Konohamaru. Even without his attention being directed to the full task of tree hopping, he still managed to land on branch after branch with immaculate ease, "Yeah Konohamaru?"

Konohamaru merely pointed lamely towards him, "Your arm."

Naruto raised an eyebrow, "What about it?" He asked as he turned his attention to his arms.

"They're glowing _and_ become transparent."

The blonde shinobi scoffed, "Don't joke about tha-." He suddenly stopped speaking and jumping as well on a branch as he looked at his arms. They _were_ glowing and for some strange unknowable reason, wisps of blue light were wafting of them, "...That can't be good."

Konohamaru came to an immediate halt next to him, a frantic and worried look on his face, "No shit boss! What the hell is happening!?" He snapped as he looked at the arms that were becoming more transparent by the minute.

"What makes you think I know!? This is totally new for me too!" Naruto almost snapped back at the younger ninja, trying his best to keep the panic from entering his voice as much as he could, 'Kurama!' He called out mentally, hoping against all hope that his life-long buddy could have an explation on what was happening.

Unfortunately, the answer he received didn't help at all with his anxiety, '...**I don't really know what's happening. All I know is that something is happening to your chakra.**' And by extension, Kurama's very own chakra.

"Fuck." Came the word from Naruto's mouth as that seemed to describe the situation he was in now, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." He repeated to himself as he tried to keep calm. He couldn't sense any thing, no chakra or any malicious intent so he didn't know if someone was casting a jutsu on him or not, "Woah!" Naruto cried out as he found himself dropping to a knee. He looked down and noticed that now the whole transparency and intangibility thing was spreading to his legs, one of them anyway, "Oh this cannot be good."

Konohamaru watched with rapt fear as Naruto's arms and sleeves seemingly started to disappear, "No shit!" He looked around as he tried to help Naruto back to his feet, "We have to get to the ground."

Naruto nodded his head as he agreed with the course of action suggested by the younger ninja, "Yeah, let's do that. That seems safe." As he picked himself up, he noticed something in the sky. He looked up and had to squint his eyes to protect his eyeballs from the rain that was coming down from the heavens, "...Those can't be normal clouds."

The dark-haired shinobi that was busy worrying about Naruto looked at said ninja, "What?" He let out blankly before looking up and seeing what Naruto was seeing, "...Yeah, those are definitely not normal clouds."

High in the sky, the storm clouds were moving. Moving in a very unnatural way as they started to form a spiral, a spiral that was seemingly centred on where they stood. Clouds didn't do that. No clouds he had ever heard of did that, unless there was a tornado off course. But there was no tornado, so these weren't definitely normal clouds.

Konohamaru was the first one to snap himself out of a daze he had found himself from staring at the clouds to quickly grab Naruto, well the parts he could grab, and jump down to the ground below, 'What the hell is going on?' He thought frantically as he landed on the solid ground with a slight thud. He turned his attention towards Naruto and quickly noticed that his blonde haired superior had something of a tired look on him, "Boss?" Konohamaru called out as he shook the blonde haired ninja.

Naruto groaned slightly as he felt his head sway from the shaking, "Urgh..." He groaned as he tried to keep his eyelids from closing and his vision from darkening, "I don't know why, but I feel really tired for some reason."

"**Don't you dare fall asleep!**" The giant nine-tailed fox that resided within Naruto bellowed out. He had survived Madara and his plans for world domination, he was sure as hell wasn't going to be taken out by some freaky weather anomaly, "**I swear I'm going to eat you if you fall asleep!"**

'Sociable as ever Kurama.' Naruto thought wearily as he noticed tendrils of energy, the original blue ones now mixed with other tendrils of energy that were a deep red in colour, 'Is that our chakra?' He didn't know if it was, but it seemed like it.

Konohamaru was beside himself. He didn't know what to do about what was happening right now. It was freaky enough with the blue tendrils of energy, but now red coloured ones were also in the mix. And they all seemed to be drifting towards the spiral formation in the sky. That merely confirmed that the freaky clouds were the cause of this, 'But why are they taking Naruto-nii?' He was right in the middle of the formation and yet nothing that Naruto was going through was happening to him.

The young blonde ninja noticed Naruto's head sag to the side a bit. He immediately went to try and shake him to keep him awake only for his hand to pass through his shoulder. He immediately pulled his arm back and noticed by now his body was becoming transparent and intangible, "I'll definitely find you Naruto-nii!" Konohamaru vowed to Naruto, tears were welling in the wells of his eyes and he was unsure of whether the blonde could hear him or not, "Don't you worry, we'll definitely find out what's happening. Just stay alive or something!" He finished off as he rubbed his eyes to get the tears away.

Although it took some difficulty, Naruto had heard what Konohamaru had said and with some more effort, managed to put on the biggest smile he could, which wasn't that big considering his usual smiles, "...Stay alive?" He repeated slowly and quietly, gaining the young dark haired boys' attention, "...I'm going to stay alive as possible until I'm Hoka-."

"Boss!" Konohamaru cried out when he saw the last visible tanned skin of his older brother like role model disappear from sight. He quickly looked up and noticed the clouds were starting to turn back to normal and the storm was passing. He quickly shot himself to his feet and started running in the direction of Konoha as fast as he could, "Got to tell the old lady and Kakashi-sama."

They would know what to do wouldn't they? Well, if they didn't, he was sure they could think of something.

He couldn't help but let out a groan of some sort as he realised he was going to be questioned by a whole lot of people when he returned from what was supposedly a simple mission missing one blonde haired Hokage candidate.

XxX

(Somewhere)

Within the control room of the Anima, Byro watched with wide eyes as he saw the initial energy readings that were being displayed on monitors. He let out a cackle of glee as he looked at the numbers, 'This is wonderful. Simply wonderful!' The machines themselves couldn't even _measure_ how much energy the source contained. Just what kind of being or object had this much energy? He doubted even the powerful dragons or the holy Exceed had the same amount of energy as this.

The magical technicians that worked within the confines of the Anima Chamber gave the Chief of Staff a wide berth as he continued to cackle gleefully in front of a monitor. Even as some technicians rushed from one station to the other, to make sure that the source of magical energy wasn't lost within the streams of time and space.

On one of the stations whose duty was to monitor such things noted something was off. He worked the instruments to try and correct the problem as best as he could to allow the magic to keep coming. He let out a sigh when it seemed like the problem had been fixed.

Then another error warning appeared on his monitor, "What?" He once more took to solving the problem and once again, he solved it. Before he even had the time to let out a sigh once more, another error message appeared and this time, it wasn't confined to his own station. All manner of warnings were appearing on every station and monitor.

"No, no, no, no!" Byro cried out as he looked at the monitor before looking around in a frenzy, "Someone tell me what the hell is happening!?" He demanded, his face slightly pale. He remembered his majesty's warning and despite how valuable he was, he was sure that his majesty would simply get rid of him and get someone else for the Chief of Staff job.

One of the technicians who had been unfortunate enough to be eyed by the old mans' glare was the one to answer, "W-We don't know Byron-sama! All of our instruments cannot make heads or tails of what's happening! Maybe whatever we're bringing through the Anima is reacting with the Anima itself!"

Byron gnashed his teeth as he waved his hand around, "Then make it so it doesn't react with the Anima!"

"We can't its going to overload the system!"

XxX

Unknown to Byron, the Anima was reacting with its intended target, wit the perpetrator of the reaction being the Kyuubi no Youko, the giant fox that resided inside Naruto. As its host was sucked into whatever portal the clouds were a medium for, it had immediately noticed that their chakra was being drained and stored.

Taking this into account, it had decided to take a risky ploy. The ploy was that whatever was trying to store itself away clearly wasn't aware of the magnificent power and being that it held and thus, it decided to merely try and overload whatever storage system they planned for it.

And to do that, with the agreement of a barely cognizant Naruto, it had unleashed its full power into the dimensional portal in hopes of breaking it. He didn't know if it worked or not, therefore he unleashed even more of its chakra.

It was beginning to think that whoever was behind this had taken into account what it was and had managed to make the correct storage for all of its power, before he noticed the weakening of the dimensional portal around it.

At this, it grinned, as tired as it was from unleashing so much of its chakra. With one last burst, it managed to shatter the portal and with its job done, it decided to sleep.

It was going to sleep for as long as possible and then let Naruto deal with whatever idiot that had dared to try and mess with them.

XxX

"Dammit!" A stocky man with black hair cursed as he held onto his hat, in a bid to stop it from flying off due to the prevailing winds that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, "Tether the horses! Secure the carriages!" He barked out orders repeatedly as he watched the men and women who worked underneath him diligently follow them, even with the sudden freak weather conditions, "Blasted magicians and their damned unnaturalness."

Magic.

It was the only feasible notion that could begin to explain just what the hell was going on here.

Less than a few minutes ago, he had been leading his caravan on a clear day in the outer lands of Fiore and the next thing he knew, dark clouds had started forming in the skies above without the slightest warning which where soon followed by the rumbling of thunder and the iridescent flashes of lightning.

He had seen enough magical phenomena to come to the conclusion that whatever had caused this sudden change in the weather of the world was magical in origin.

He had to dig himself in and grit his teeth when the wind suddenly picked up for no reason at all. He could barely hear the neighing of horses and the shouts of men from the howling sounds of the wind itself. It seemed as if this area alone had garnered the ire and fury of a divine wind god or spirit for no other reason than existing.

"_Gah!_"

A scream of pain attracted him to the side and to his horror he saw one of his men on the ground clutching his leg. Although it was difficult to see because of the rain, he could make out the slight red coloured tint of blood.

His eyes widened in horror, "Take cover behind the carriages!" He bellowed as he quickly moved to grab the fallen worker and drag him behind cover. He had heard stories of magicians being able to manipulate the very winds themselves to cut through solid rock...and that was considered nothing more than barely average.

A shiver rolled through his spine at the thought. If that was considered average, then the fallen worker would have found himself the unwilling subject of an amputation by natural forces. With effort on his part and the constant fear that another blade of wind may very well cut into him, he and along with some of his other workers dragged the injured behind the sturdy carts that made up his caravan.

He only wished that they were strong enough to withstand the punishment that the wind and storm brought upon them.

From the corner of his eyes, he saw another of his workers try and rear in a horse, 'Damned fool!' He cursed before moving out of cover, "Forget the horse! Get your mangy ass over here!"

Unfortunately, the howl of the wind seemed to carry his voice away from the direction of the worker. Fear crept into the man's heart before his eyes widened in horror when the horse the worker was trying to rear in found its head and some of its neck detached from the rest of its body.

That seemed to tell the worker that it was best to preserve himself rather than the workers as he quickly ran for cover himself. Himself spotting a slight cut on his shirt and body.

The leader let out a sigh of relief, 'How many horses are we going to lose in this freak storm?' He thought as he wiped some sweat that had been mixed with the rain from his brow. It wasn't as if he valued the lives of his horses more than his men, it was just horses were expensive to replace and also, if all of them died, who was going to pull the carriages of the caravan?

"Damned magicians." The injured worker muttered underneath his breath from beside him, "The whole lot of them should be locked up. Messing around with such dangerous forces and unnaturalness." He continued as another worker wrapped a piece of cloth around his leg to stem the bleeding. He had been lucky that the blade of wind hadn't penetrated too deeply or cut his leg a few centimetres in one direction or he would have bled out and found himself rather dead.

The caravan leader couldn't help but agree with him, "I hear you..." He looked up into the sky where the unnatural spiral like clouds that had formed were still continuing to maintain their position, "And too think back when I was nothing more than a young lad, I wanted to be a magician."

The injured worker turned his head to look at his boss, "Sorry sir, did you say something?"

Said man shook his head in the negative manner, "No. I was just talking to myself lad. You just sit there and rest. Seems like we're going to have to wait this out."

The worker nodded, "Will do sir." A small smile came onto his face as he decided to make light of the situation, "Does my contract cover injuries done by magical parties?"

The caravan leader could only roll his eyes in amusement. Well, at least that's the sort of spirit that he wanted from his men.

Once more, he looked up to the sky and just like how the unnatural storm had made itself known to the world in one fell swoop, particularly them, it had just disappeared as mysteriously as it had come.

How strange, but then again, so was the nature of magic in of itself.

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><p><strong>AN: Made some changes here and there to Naruto canon that will be alluded through narration or by Naruto himself as the story progresses.<strong>

**Story starts 2 years before canon does so that X782. So that means every one is 2 years younger i.e. Natsu 15, Erza 17, Mira 17 etc etc.**

**Pairing...I have something in mind, just still weighing it out in the head and thinking of how I could make it work.**

**Future chapters will be way longer and with that, I bid you adieu.**

**Raiden.**


	2. Brand New Horizons

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Fairy Tail. I shall petition both their authors to see if they would allow me to own these two nearly marvellous pieces of work. Under my care, I shall make them marvellous.

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><p><span>Brand New Horizons<span>

Whatever Naruto had expected to see when he opened his eyes, it certainly had not been a sight of himself freefalling from the sky back down to earth at a frightening pace...head first of course. An important fact like that couldn't be forgotten about or just put to the side.

Right, first order of business was to make sure that he wasn't heading towards the ground head first. Quickly correcting himself to make sure that his head and feet where placed in their correct directions in regards with the ground and sky, Naruto managed to catch the same spiral like cloud formation that had been the start of this entire thing.

And the formation was dissipating and was quickly losing its form. That didn't stop the torrential rainfall that kept pelting into him though.

Putting that to the side for now, he decided to get to the most pressing of issues at the moment, the fact that he was still hurtling towards mother earth and he didn't have a parachute or any other way to stop his descent, 'I really, _really_ wish old man Rikudo hadn't taken back his Yang power.' Because being able to fly right about now would have been extremely useful, 'Come on think Naruto, think!' The blonde spurred himself on in an effort to try and think of a way to stop and avert his incoming doom.

He had survived far too many things to be just killed off by gravity and some stupid clouds.

A light bulb went off in his head as an idea popped up. Naruto brought his hands together to make a 't' sign for his signature jutsu, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A corporeal clone of himself puffed into existence beside himself. Without any sort of verbal command between them or from the original, the clone and the original linked hands at the wrists.

As he came within a certain distance of the ground, the clone twisted in the air, along with that twist Naruto himself before, throwing the original back up into the air before the clone itself crashed into the ground and disappearing a puff of smoke. Naruto soon followed after it, but landing much more safely without any damage to himself.

"That was close." The blonde muttered as he dusted himself off. He didn't think that was actually going to work when he first thought of it. It had taken some effort from his clone to throw him back into the air against the momentum the original and the clone itself had when it had been hurling down to the ground.

After dusting himself off, Naruto took a long, detailed look of his surroundings, trying his best to discern his location, "Okay then, where am I?" He muttered underneath his breath. He had landed in a grassy clearing that was surrounded by forest. He had to admit that he was somewhat slightly surprised by something about the forest itself, 'I didn't know trees could be that small.'

It was weird. In nearly all his life, the vast majority of the trees he had seen during his time around the Elemental Nations, the trees, no matter the location, not only did they tower over him, trying their best to touch the sky, they were also large and thick to the point one would need several people to at least make a ring around the trunk. The ones he were seeing weren't even that big, it was more in line like the type of trees one saw inside a settlement.

Maybe it was some sort of natural thing in a country he hadn't visited before? He didn't know and didn't particularly care at this moment in time.

Shrugging off the strange tree size he was seeing, Naruto looked up into the sky to check his positioning before raising his hand and pointing his index finger out and started playing a game of meeney-miney-mo with the four cardinal directions before stopping at one.

He eventually came to a halt in one direction and shrugged, "West it is then." He muttered with a shrug as he started running in the direction he had chosen at random. At best, that probably hadn't been the best way to determine something as important as direction, especially when he was lost, but it was because Naruto was lost that he was doing it in the first place.

He didn't see anything that could serve as a landmark and even if he did, his geography wasn't up to the point that he could remember every single land mark within the Elemental Continent. He figured if he ran in one direction long enough, he was bound to run into something, like a road that lead somewhere, because all roads always lead to somewhere that was the point of roads, or even better yet, a person.

It wasn't like he could clone himself and have his clones run off in all those different directions now could he?

...Actually, he could, "I'm an idiot." Naruto berated himself openly, rather happy that he was all alone in the middle of nowhere. If someone had been there to hear him say that, he wouldn't have said at all. Once again, he brought his hands together into the shape of the letter 't', "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

A large cloud of smoke enveloped Naruto's form before the original shot out from the cloud of smoke, and seven other cloned forms of himself shot out in the other cardinal directions. He had also created another four clones to sent in the ordinal directions, because, hey why not? And at least this way, he had all his bases covered.

XxX

From what he could tell from the position of the sun up all the way in the sky, it had been nearly two hours since he had ran off in a westerly direction with the hopes of finding some sort of sign of civilization.

Naruto sat idly on a tree branch, with a leg that was swinging lazily at the side, "Nothing." His clones had reached the time limit that he had set them up with and dispelled themselves. If they had continued to be in existence for any longer, the blonde would have been risking major migraines and he wanted to keep his head clear in case anything happened. He frowned in irritation as he scratched his mane of spiky hair for some kind of idea, "Kurama!" He quickly said as he snapped his fingers.

Maybe his partner-in-life had a better understanding of what was going on? Or better yet, how they had ended up in a seemingly endless forest, 'Kurama.' The blonde ninja called out into the depths of his mind and then proceeded to wait for a reply. It never came, 'Kurama.' He called out once more before a twitch of the eyebrow showed the mounting annoyance Naruto was starting to feel with the entire cold shoulder he was receiving from his vulpine companion, 'Oi fuzzball!' After everything they had been through with together, why did the fox continue to be such a dick sometimes?

Naruto was sure that calling the fox by such a derogatory nickname would have been enough to stir it from whatever sleep it was in, or if it was ignoring him, angrily snap out at him, instead, he once more didn't receive an answer.

Now he was actually starting to feel like he should be worried and probably starting freaking out. Kurama _always_ answered to fuzzball.

Naruto stopped swinging his leg and closed his eyes, began to regulate and control his breathing. When he opened his eyes, instead of seeing the natural, earth-like colours of the forest environment he had been in before, he opened his eyes to a vast, grassy field, the new mindscape that he had managed to mould through several hours of intense meditation.

'Never doing that again.' The blonde thought with a grimace as he looked around. The head-ache that he had suffered from afterwards hadn't been worth it in the slightest, 'And the furball didn't even say thank you.' Naruto finished off his thought with a twitching eyebrow at the thought before taking in a calming breath to control himself and get himself back on track as to the reason to why he was here.

He took a look around for the usual gigantic figure of his fox partner before nearly jumping out of his skin when his look around had made him do a one eighty to come face to face with one of Kurama's giant claws. Well, considering that, it could be considered face-to-claw then than face-to-face.

He nearly scampered away, memories of the time Kurama always tried to stab him with those very sharp claws early on in their relationship coming to mind. He would have if he hadn't remembered if he had done so, Kurama would never have let it die.

Instead he made several steps back to make sure he had a good view of the fox and that was when he noticed that it was sleeping. An eyebrow twitched, "I don't know who's lazier, you or Shikamaru." He grumbled underneath his breath but loud enough that the fox could hear him.

Once again, Kurama didn't react at all at the slight. Being compared to a human, especially a human it barely recognised or didn't have an ounce of respect for would have brought a rather snarky or sometimes, violent response. But Naruto had got nothing.

Nothing at all.

And he was worried, "If this is a joke," Naruto began as he walked towards the fox, "It's not funny." He said as he stopped in front of its resting snout and started prodding it.

Apparently that had been enough to get a reaction out of the giant fox as it scrunched its snout in a bid to stop the prodding, "**Go away brat...sleeping.**" It hadn't even bothered to open its eyes to look at Naruto and its mouth had barely moved to utter those words.

"You always sleep." Naruto remarked as he just wasn't about to leave empty handed, "If you haven't noticed, we were sucked up by a freaky storm and clouds or something like that."

He had to wait a while for Kurama to respond to him, but that only happened because once again, Naruto had started prodding the snout of the giant fox, "**Not storm...Jikukan (Space-Time) technique...disrupted it before anything else happened..."** The fox tried to give a shrug to finish of its sentence that it didn't know but couldn't find the energy. It was still trying to recuperate from spending a godly amount of chakra to disrupt whatever Jikukan jutsu that had been used on them, "**Tired, let me sleep. We'll do this some other time."** He finished off just as tiredly as he implied he was and manage to garner up the strength to will Naruto out of his mindscape so he could continue sleeping.

Naruto snapped his eyes open and blinked a few times as he tried to come to terms with what just happened, "Wait a second, did that stupid fox just kick me out of my own head!?" What the hell? His head was his truly private place. It just wasn't nice to do something like that. Not nice at all, "I hate that bastard some times." At least how he got wherever he was had been answered...well somewhat answered anyway.

With a sigh, Naruto dropped to the ground below, dusting himself off once again even though there was no point. He was prepared to do the whole Kage Bunshin thing again before his nose picked up a scent that he could recognise.

He took a couple of sniffs to make sure, "Smoke?" He let out as he sniffed the air again, channelling chakra to his nose so that he could tell the direction where it was coming from, "It is smoke!" Smoke meant fire, fire probably meant civilisation or people!

With that thought in mind, Naruto immediately darted off in the direction the smell of smoke was coming from, quite eager to finally be able to find someone that could tell him where the hell he was.

As he ran through the forest, a gap in the canopy created by the trees allowed him a glimpse into the sky. At what he saw caused him to come to a halt, and immediately jump to the top of the tree and break the canopy.

Black smoke.

A big cloud of black smoke that was rising into the air.

He couldn't tell what sort of origin the smoke came from. His view was blocked by the fact that the smoke seem to originate from the other side of what looked like to be a sheer drop, probably a cliff of some sort and he was too far away to look past it. For all he knew, it could have been a forest fire or worse, some sort of settlement that was on fire, accidental or on purpose.

With renewed vigour, Naruto immediately dropped down to the ground and sped towards the smoke, pumping chakra into his legs as he darted past trees and to the animals of the forest, he was nothing more than an orange and black blur that sometimes startled them whenever he passed packs of grazing deer among others.

The blonde ninja had to come to slow down when he came to the edge of a sudden drop that had restricted his view of the origin of the smoke. The good thing was that the drop wasn't a cliff, it was slop that slope that was extremely steep. The trees and vegetation that were growing on the slope might as well have been vertical in the way they grew.

Running down hill such a steep slope at full pelt would have attracted all sorts of trouble that could result in his injury. But at least the limited view that he had seen from the top of the slope had shown that the smoke was originating from a village that was in the midst of suffering from a large fire.

With a glimpse of civilisation in sight, Naruto put even more effort into reaching his target before that sign of civilisation went off in smoke. He had to wonder what had caused an entire village to seemingly burst into smoke.

As Naruto neared the village, he could hear voices, voices that were shouting and screaming along with what seemed to be the clash of metals. Something that could be attributed to fighting. He had been enough fights and battles that he was able to make-out the sounds of battle if he was within hearing range.

It also didn't hurt that he could feel a large surge of negative emotions. The suffering that he was feeling from the direction of the village among other emotions was crushing. He sometimes hated this particular ability of his, it had made it quite difficult to function whenever he was in the midst of combat or after a battle.

At least the only good thing that came from the ability was that it had made him mature faster than he thought possible and stopped him from wearing his emotions on his sleeve like he used to do. To a certain extent that is.

Could that be considered a good thing anyway?

XxX

The sounds of people shouting and screaming could be heard along with the sounds and feeling of chaos throughout the village as simple villagers, nothing more than farmers tried to run away from their sudden attackers.

"No, stop!" The unlucky villager that cried that out was one of many that had either found themselves cut down by their attackers through all kinds of weaponry or had found themselves on the wrong end of a lethal attack of magic that had been cast to kill.

How did it come to this?

Not even long ago, it had just been another simple day. They had woken up not long after sunrise, some even earlier to begin their simple but happy lives. Friends and neighbours had greeted each other, shopkeepers had opened their shops to sell their wares. It seemed like it was going to be another day.

Then all of a sudden, they had found themselves suddenly attacked by slavers of all people.

"Hey, hey, hey," a relatively tall man with short, blue spiky hair and an outwards jutting fringe hanging over the left side of his face called out to his underlings. He was relative calm considering the chaos and killing that was going on around him, "What did I say? Don't kill the merchandise dammit!" He berated as he raised a hand to his temple and began to massage it, seemingly in a gesture of annoyance at what was happening around him, "This is what happens when a bunch of amateurs do something that needs a professional hand." He callously breathed out with a sigh.

The man was dressed in highly elaborate clothing that consisted of a simple white dress shirt that had outlined edges, light coloured pinstriped pants with visible hems held up by an elaborate belt and polished shoes. His attire was finished off by an elaborately decorated cloak that covered most of his frame.

From the side, one of the slavers jogged towards him, "Bora-sama."

The dark-haired man turned his gaze towards the approaching slaver with a raised eyebrow, "Yes?"

The slaver, who spotted several blood stains on his person and also on the sword that he was carrying came to a stop just a few short yards away from Bora, "We've secured the village." The slaver reported, panting lightly as he caught his breath, "We had to take care of some of the idiots that resisted." Of course those who had resisted hadn't stood a chance. Mere villagers against people probably knew how to handle themselves in a fight? It would have been a slaughter.

"Hm," Bora hummed in thought as he looked around and noticed the remaining villagers being directed towards the village square where he was currently stood, "Well, it couldn't be helped I guess. If they had calmly just surrendered without a fuss we wouldn't have had to burn down their little village and we would make more money whilst we're at it." He let out a dejected sigh, "If only it was a village full of women. Things would have been much easier."

It didn't take long for the rest of the villagers to be brought into the central village square. They were all huddled together with enough slavers around them to keep them together and keeping a watchful eye over them in case they tried something.

It was unlikely they would in the first place. The moment they had been gathered, chains had been clasped onto their hands and feet to stop them from getting any ideas about running off in search of freedom or help, whichever floated their fancy.

Bora hummed as he paced himself around the large group of slaves. In total, there seem to be just under a hundred or so potential slaves. Some of them looked rather valuable to the right buyer, others not so much. But he couldn't just get rid of them anyway, money was still money.

His personal net worth was even higher than the time that he spent around loitering for that stupid legal guild of his back in the day.

The looks of fear, sadness and the pleading gazes of mercy that were being directed towards him didn't at all unnerve him as he slowly came to a stop in front of the group. He did notice that some of the villagers had rather defiant looks in their eyes.

No, no, no. That wouldn't do.

The defiant ones would most likely cause some trouble in the future. Probably try to lead a mass break-out or something along the lines when they're being transported to his ship. He stopped in front of one person, the sounds of flames flickering in the background could be heard as they burned down buildings uncaringly.

He pointed at one of the villagers with the strongest gaze, "Yeah, you'll do." He said with a nod of the head, "Eyes like those just tell me that they're going to cause trouble. No doubt about it. Can't be having that."

The villager continued to glare at him, "You monster. Don't think you'll get away with this."

Bora nearly let out a snort of amusement. The defiant ones always said that. He had been in this business for a couple of years now and he was still going strong and had managed to get away with a lot of things. He was pretty confident that he would get away with this, he had done it before, "I don't know. I have previous experience." He snapped his fingers to get the attention of one of the slavers, "Unshackle this one. I think we need to make a demonstration about what will happen if someone tries any funny business."

The slaver gave a quick nod of the head, "Yes sir." He quickly said before jogging over to the villager and quickly and brought him away from the rest. The villager struggled against the slaver but it was all for nought.

"Most of you are definitely going to hate me for this." Bora began to say as he slowly walked towards the villager who was being held down by the slaver on his knees, "Honestly, if you're going to hate someone, it would probably be best to hate God. After all, he's the one who's allowing all of this to happen." He lifted a hand slightly away from him which was encased in purple fire as he continued to near the villager who must have realised that something that wasn't good for his health was about to occur as he increased even more in his struggles and started sweating, "But then again, you can just blame your own rotten luck. Trust me when I say this, I take no pleasure from this, I do feel for you really," That was a lie. He took some form of pleasure from this but most of the time, he couldn't really care about what was going to happen to them, "But we all have to make a living somehow in this world we live in don't we?" He finished off as he stopped in front of the villager.

From behind him, he could hear the sounds of chains clinking as one or probably some of the villagers tried to come to the aid of their fellow villager, "Honey!" A female cry went out.

Honey? Oh, probably his wife or girlfriend. If it was any of those, he was doing the man a favour. He was rather certain he wouldn't want to know what would become of his wife was she was sold off into the slave markets of foreign countries, particularly if she was of the good-looking variety.

If he wasn't such a cold individual he would have probably done what he was about to do next in a much more fashionable manner, but he still had to make an example. So when he brought his purple flame coated hand to touch the shoulder of the villager, the thought of increasing the speed of his magic flame to hasten the death of the man didn't really cross his mind. It might have, but probably the man's screams had stopped him from thinking it.

The slaver that had been holding down the villager had long since moved aside in case he found himself being caught in a case of friendly fire.

"Aargh!" The villager screamed as he fell to the floor and began to thrash around in a bid to put out the flames as he was burned alive by the purple flames as they slowly spread across his body. His screams were even loud enough that they were able to deafen out the sobs that were coming from his lover from behind who had forced herself to look away from the horrible sight, an action that was copied by many of the villagers.

Bora definitely knew that comparisons of him and devil were being made with the minds of the villagers. They were probably also thinking various nasty words about him. But when he turned around, he smiled to himself, those eyes that had been defiant were now wavering. He would probably have to ruin another merchandise just to make sure they were completely broken like some of the villagers who had seemingly resigned themselves to their fate.

"Suiton: Teppoudama (Water Release: Gunshot)!"

An unknown voice caught his attention before a splash of water that was followed by sprays of that water hitting the back of his cloak and the hiss of steam. The hiss of steam that signified that his fire had been put out. He turned on his heel to face the villager who spotted some darkened skin and burns but was for the most part, alive.

He wasn't supposed to be alive, "What just happened?"

"I'll tell you what just happened," People that could, immediately turned their eyes towards the direction of where this new voice was originating from. Their gazes took them to the roof of one of the village houses that had not been caught in the fire that had been spreading throughout the village. Speaking of which, the other fires had somehow been put out to, when had that happened? "You just went and signed your own death warrant."

Bora's eyes narrowed on the individual standing on the rooftop. He was exotic looking, but his blonde hair and bright blue eyes didn't seem like the type of thing that would be found of someone with tanned skin like his, "Who are you?"

Naruto rose up from the crouch that he had been in and palmed a fist, his eyes icy cold as he glared down at Bora, "The guy that's going to shove a kunai so far up your ass you're going to be feeling it in the next life."

Naruto was pissed.

And that was an understatement. He hadn't even reached the village itself when he came to the outskirts when he found one of the slimy looking guys gleefully hacking away at some people who were running away from him. It was safe to say that person had found himself with kunai that had been deposited into his liver and he had made sure to twist it around for added pain.

He didn't know or care if the slaver was still alive as he slowly bled out. Cruel? Maybe. But the sight of a boy that couldn't be older than 7 lying face down in the grass with blood all over had kicked out any thoughts of mercy from him.

If these people thought they were going home anytime soon, they were dead wrong. Funny, they were going to be dead soon anyway.

Bora just looked at Naruto owlishly, along with the other slavers before he let out a snigger, a snigger that became a full blown cackle of laughter, "Do you not know who I am boy?" He said in between laughter, he could barely control himself from rolling on the floor laughing, even his fellow slavers had joined in howling in laughter, "I am Bora of Prominence! One of the most powerful mages around. You should have just stayed hidden in whatever hole you had crawled out from. At least you could have stayed alive."

In his pissed of state, Naruto had completely and utterly missed the word 'mage' as he continued to cast an icy, blue glare at Bora, "Never heard of you." He stated bluntly.

Bora just looked at Naruto with an even gaze before a twitch of the eyebrow broke off his even façade, "Then that's going to be your downfall brat, Prominence Whip!" With a swipe of an arm, a dark-red coloured circle appeared in front of Bora, gaining Naruto's attention as he readied himself for an attack before from the circle, several fiery, purple beams burst forth from the circle and homed in on Naruto and the building he was standing on before hitting their target in a fiery explosion.

Bora placed his hands on his hips triumphantly and leaned back to look into the sky slightly and let out a boisterous laugh, "Haha, that's what you get for not knowing your betters!" He panned his head to the group of villagers that had watched the entire scene, "Let that be a lesson to all of you. No heroics of any kind will be tolerated. Now where was I?" He muttered as he turned to look down at the villager from before and carry on with his demonstration, he just couldn't leave something like that half done. But there was just one tiny problem, "Eh? Where did he go?" He asked as he noticed the villager from before wasn't where he had left him, "Did he crawl away or something?"

"Or something."

Now that couldn't be right. He was supposed to be dead. His magic had hit him flush on. There was no way he could be alive. Bora turned his head to the other side of the square and lo and behold, standing leaning against the wall was Naruto, "You're alive?" A bit belatedly, he noticed the villager from before was resting nearby and some of his slavers were lying on the ground in front of the blonde. Just when did that happen? He hadn't even had anything, "How?"

Naruto didn't know whether the question was directed at the fact that he was alive or the dozen or so bodies lying around unmoving and neither did he care anyway, "I moved." That was the basis of dodging things wasn't it? Using one's legs to move out of the way. A quick Shunshin (Body Flicker) had been enough to dodge those beams of fire.

Bora's eyebrow twitched again at the blatant disrespect he was receiving from the blonde in front of him, "You damn brat!" He shouted angrily at Naruto as he swiped at Naruto once more to create the same magic circle from before and like before, purple beams shot out. This time though, they weren't just aimed at Naruto, but also at the villager he had rescued, "Let's see if you can dodge this and save that fool!"

Was that a challenge? If so, Naruto was more than ready to accept as once more, he moved. First towards the villager before grabbing him as softly as he could so not to make him subject to more pain than he was already in from his burns and promptly leaping away from the beams of fire and landing onto a nearby roof.

He placed the villager down and looked down at a bewildered Bora who had followed his movements only because Naruto had allowed him too. With a dull look on his face, he crouched down and stared at his clearly outmatched opponent, "Are you done yet?" It wasn't really a question, "If so, my turn." He finished off as he vanished once more from his place on the roof, the only things showing that he had been there in the first place were the sudden leaves that were dropping to the roof.

Several grunts and cluttering attracted his attention behind him in the direction of the villagers. Bora had to take a step back when he saw the sight that he was being made subject too. All around him, he could see a blur move across the remaining slavers, do something and then go on to the next target and not long afterwards he had done that, a slaver would either fall to the floor, or just plain out go flying in one direction as if he had been hit by a locomotive train.

For the first time in this entire situation, a thought crept into Bora's head, perhaps it would be prudent to make a run for it. Something told him a fight against this blonde wasn't in the best of his interest or personal health. He had managed to dodge his spells effortlessly and he didn't seem at all to be trying.

With Naruto distracted with the remaining slavers, Bora quickly cast another spell. Purple flames circled his feet before he snapped his right fingers and the flames turned into a blaze taking on a solid and cloud like property which he stood on and took to the skies with, leaving a trail of purple fire.

He didn't get far though, "What, leaving already?" Naruto's voice could be heard questioning in a patronizing tone as he suddenly appeared in front of Bora, his leg outstretched back in the motion that showed he was going for a kick, "It's bad form for a leader to just leave his subordinates out to hang like that." The blonde haired, blue eyed ninja finished off as he released his leg to land a kick straight into Bora's face. He was pretty sure he had broken something with that kick.

Bora hurtled back down to Earth, crashing into one of the burned buildings, but thanks to the fact that it had already crumbled down, had served as something of a crash pad for his fall. If it had not, he most likely would have died.

He groggily got himself to his feet clutching his nose that was bleeding profusely and was slightly out of shape, "Y-You brat!" He cursed, stuttering somewhat as fear crept into him as he realised that this might very well be the last hours in Earthland that he was experiencing, "Don't you know who I am?"

Naruto landed gently on the ground, kicking up some dust before standing up, "I don't know, Bora something, which I have to say, is the most stupidest name ever." The ninja retorted as he walked forward towards the down magician.

Bora tried to scramble away from the blue eyed devil in front of him but found himself not gaining any sort of ground, "S-Stay back, Prominence Typhoon!" He outstretched his hands were a magic circle that was larger than the ones before appeared that immediately jutted out a large, spiralling column of fire aimed directly at Naruto. He watched as the column of fire engulfed his blue eyed opponent before letting out something of a victorious laugh at the sight, "Haha, take that you punk! I'm Bora of Prominence, know your bett-."

Bora never finished of his sentence as his head snapped forward from the force of a kick from behind to the back of his head. His neck muscles and spine strained to keep his head attached to the rest of his body before snapping back violently, "I hope that didn't give you whiplash or anything," Naruto said from behind Bora, "But we're not done here."

"Gah..." Bora moaned pitifully as he moved a hand to nurse his neck. Whiplash, the brat had given him whiplash. Son of a bitch. If it hadn't been obvious before, fighting was now definitely not an option, time for option number two, "P-Please, I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. Let me go." He begged, trying to sound as apologetic as he could about the entire thing.

Naruto looked down at the top of Bora's head with an indiscernible look on his face, "...Tell me you didn't think that would actually work?" He asked after a while. Did he really think that by begging he could be let off for the things he had caused? The innocent people that his men had killed and thus made him responsible?

No. Not really, but then again, that had been better than nothing. Was he really going to die here? Dammit, he still had a lot of things he hadn't done! He just couldn't die here, not like this.

And just like that, option number three suddenly made itself known. A gleam came to Bora's eyes along with a satisfied smirk. From Naruto's position, he couldn't see the look on Bora's face and thus had been caught slightly off-guard when Bora suddenly brought his hands together to summon a large magic seal that began to gather energy.

Prepared for an attack on his persons, Naruto got ready to retaliate but certainly wasn't prepared when he noticed the direction of where the magic circle was pointing at. It wasn't pointed at him, instead it was pointed in the direction of. His eyes widened, "Oh shit."

"Hell Prominence!"

The gathered energy inside the magic seal was released in a large, destructive looking, laser like beam that heading directly for the still tied up villagers. The villagers who couldn't do anything but close their eyes as the beam neared them and waited for their sudden end. What a cruel twist, some had already been prepared to live their lives as slaves and then the mysterious blonde suddenly appeared and their freedom seemed like it was guaranteed, but now? Not so much.

"Thank you Kakashi-sensei, Doton: Doryuheki (Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall)!"

From the direction the beam was coming from, a large wall made out of earth seemingly rose itself from the ground, creating a barrier between the beam and the villagers. The beam made impact with the wall, creating an explosion that caused several screams to ring out from the villagers, some wondering if the wall was going to hold as it shook from the force of the magical attack.

Fortunately for them, the wall did continue to stand and protect from the blast and from the side he had erected the jutsu, Naruto immediately brought his hands up from the ground and began to vault to the top of the wall. Target civilians would he? Okay then, no more mister nice guy. This Bora guy was going to die now.

When he reached the top of the wall, Naruto let out a curse as he saw a trail of purple like smoke go off into the distance, "Bastard." He had used the villagers as a diversion to give him a chance to run away. He could give chase, but...Naruto looked behind himself, down below at the villagers, "Guess I can't just leave them like that." And by that, he meant chained and sitting ducks for anyone else that decided to come across the village. Also, he might have to do something about this giant earth wall inside the limits of their village.

Yeah...that seemed like a good idea.

With one last look, he glanced into the direction that Bora had made himself scarce in. This was not over, not by a longshot. Bora had better start praying to whatever deities he believed in for mercy because when he would eventually find him, Naruto wasn't going to show him any.

XxX

(Two Days Later)

For the next couple of days after saving the village, Naruto had stayed in the village to help the villagers bury their dead and rebuild their homes. What should have taken several weeks or even months to perform had taken nothing more than a couple of days.

Reason being that Uzumaki Naruto was a one human army. Literally.

The Kage Bunshin no Jutsu was a godsend sometimes.

Naruto had felt the villagers had gone through enough and instead of them working on rebuilding their village so soon after digging graves for their fellow villagers and loved ones. The blonde mercenary ninja had taken it upon himself rebuild the village by his lonesome. Lonesome being him and his multitudes of clones working around the clock, much to the amazement of the villagers at seeing this sort of magic.

But once more, the fact they kept commenting on Naruto's abilities as magic passed right over the blondes head simply because of one thing, the people had been praising him whilst they had been commenting on his abilities, and thus Naruto had only heard the things that he wanted to hear...things that satisfied his ego and made him preen like a peacock.

"We can't thank you enough Naruto-san." The village elder said as he stood at the entrance of the village, behind him stood the remaining villagers that had gone to see off their hero. Huh, this somewhat looked familiar, "Really, we can't. I dread to think what would have happened to us if that dreadful man had managed to fulfil whatever machinations he had with us." A shiver rolled through the old man's body at just trying to imagine the thought.

Naruto just smiled at the old man, "Don't worry about it." His smile dropped a bit as he thought about the people he couldn't save, "If I had been faster, more people would be here."

The elder shook his head, "Don't blame yourself boy. If you hadn't arrived at all when you did, this village would have been nothing more than a ghost-village." Apart from the remains of the deceased, it would have been devoid of people in its entirety, "Can't we make you stay for a little longer? If its about lodgings, I know for sure many wouldn't mind sharing their house with you, or you could just build yourself a house with that cloning magic of yours." He finished off with a laugh that was shared by the villagers.

"Or you can stay with me and Lucia." The villager that Naruto had saved from being burned alive cut in as he looked at Naruto.

The blonde haired teenager looked at the villager, Kelvin he was called, "I wouldn't want to intrude. Especially in the house making of you newlyweds." He finished of with a suggestive wink in the direction of Kelvin and the woman beside him who blushed, gaining some laughs and wolf whistles around the places, "And anyway, I think I've been gone for long enough. It's about time I returned back home."

The elder nodded his head in understanding, "If you're ever in the area, always remember you will have a place here." He then blinked in realisation as he remembered something, "Ah yes, before I forget..." He muttered as he placed a hand behind his back before moving it back in front of him, holding an envelope, "Please take this as a sign of our gratitude. It's not much, but it's the least we can do for saving us and rebuilding our village for us."

Naruto looked at the eyebrow, "There's money in there isn't there?" The elder nodded his head, "I can't do that. You guys need that more than me." If he knew his current circumstances, he would know how wrong that statement was. But even so, even if he knew, Naruto still wouldn't have taken the money either way.

"No, no, we insist. Please take it." The envelope was shoved forward.

Naruto shoved it back, "No, but I really can't." He might have been a mercenary, but he hadn't saved the village to get paid, he had saved it out of is own good will. Knowing that this could go on and on, Naruto decided to see if he could work something else out, "If you want to pay me, you could at least tell me where I am and a map would help out too."

The elder blinked at Naruto before sighing in resignation and pocketing the envelope. He had learned over the few days that the blonde destroyer of men in front of him was rather stubborn and couldn't easily be swayed, "You're in the village of Seme lad."

"Seme?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow, "Where's that?"

"It's in the southeast part of the Kingdom of Fiore, near the sea and all."

"...Kingdom of Fiore?" Was there ever such a country in the Elemental Continent? He didn't know. He was now dreading actually never catching up on his geography, "...That wouldn't be anywhere near Hi no Kuni would it?" He asked slowly.

The elder villager squinted his eyes, "_Hi no Kuni_?" He repeated as if tasting the word seeing how it rolled of the tongue, "Exotic sounding words that is. Sorry to say lad, but never heard of such a place and I've travelled all over the place in my youth."

Naruto just looked at the elder with a blank expression on his face, "...I would really love that map right about now." Why did he have this foreboding feeling in the pit of his stomach? Nothing bad was happening at all.

"Ah yes, sure lad. We'll get you one."

XxX

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

Nothing..._again_!

He would have been lying if he wasn't starting to freak out now. He was close to full on panicking. Just what the hell was going on? Why couldn't he summon any of the toads?

Naruto was in a clearing several miles away from the village. After he had been given the map by the village elder, luckily it had been a continental map, his blood had run cold and that foreboding feeling became even more intense.

He couldn't recognise the continent.

Nor the countries. Nothing.

There was no Hi no Kuni, no Kaze no Kuni, nothing of the sort. Nothing at all. Even queries to the elder had garnered him no answers to the sudden disappearances of countries that he knew very well off.

After that, he had gone off to find a place to summon one of the toads. He figured if he summoned a toad, he could get it to reverse summon him to Mt. Myoboku.

He had been trying to summon a simple toad for the past few hours now and he was getting nothing in return. Nothing at all. He had at first thought that it was chakra related and thus had checked to see if everything was working correctly internally. Everything was fine, he just couldn't summon anything, nothing at all.

And then there was Sage Mode.

Something that should take several minutes to occur only took a couple of seconds. There was something about this place that was different. He wanted to chalk it up that the place just had the same similar characteristics like Mt. Myoboku, but even he had to recognise this place was different.

The home of the toads had a different feeling to this place. And even in Mt. Myoboku, gathering natural energy as quickly as he did here was beyond possible unless he was using the special oils.

_"__**Not storm...Jikukan techinique...disrupted it before anything else happened..."**_

The Kyuubi's words rang throughout Naruto's head like a pair of drums. Had Kurama being alluding to the storm that brought them here being some kind of jikukan jutsu?

...And he had somehow managed to disrupt it whilst he was probably still within its grasp...

Naruto read his manga and watched his movies...he knew his sci-fi..

...But still, "No." There was just no way. Stuff like that didn't happen. But then again, some of the things that happened back home just couldn't be considered any kind of normal now could they? The answer might as well have been screaming in his face at this very moment right now, "Another fucking dimension?" That was a bad joke. A really bad joke.

Maybe he was a in a genjutsu? No wait, he had already gone that route, nothing had come from it.

How the hell was he going to get home?

He couldn't stay here. He had things going for him back home. He was so close to finally realising his dream of being Hokage. Not wanting to sound cocky or anything, but he was pretty damned sure Kakashi would choose him as his successor as Hokage.

And what of his friends? He just couldn't up and disappear like that. He was sure even Kurama wouldn't like their new situation anymore than him. He would probably never admit it, but he would miss his fellow Biju.

He would have too, they were the closest thing he had to family.

He had to go back home. He _had _to.

And one way or another, he was going back home. And if this entire thing had actually been caused by someone, he was going to make them feel his wrath for plucking him out of his world.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Second chapter. Man I'm tired. That's what studying does to you kids, so let this be a lesson to you children, never ever study. It's not worth the fatigue that comes with it, nor the stress when you have to wait for the results...or the disappointing look your mother gives you when she sees you didn't inherit any of her specialness when it comes to mathematics...goddammit woman! I'm sorry I didn't inherit all of your special Taiwanese maths genes. Fuck. I got into a good uni didn't I? Can't she just have that?<strong>

**Fuck my dad for going abroad and banging my mum.**

**...Well, that weren't way offffff~ course, oh well. It's true and I have a microeconomic exam on friday too. I wouldn't hate the module if it wasn't for the maths. I fucking hate the maths. **

**Ah, anyway, for some of the magic spells, most of them are in that other japanese alphabet that karigana maybe? I don't know, my brain hurts and its too tired to think correctly. What I'm trying to say is that unless its actually not in kanji and doesn't sound like english without a japanese accent, then I'll write it down in english, if its in kanji, it would be written in Japanese along with its translation. Comprende? Bien.**

**Hasta la manana mios ninos.**

**Raiden out.**


	3. Making Friends---Probably

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor do I own Fairy Tail. **

* * *

><p><span>Making Friends...Probably<span>

Realising the truth was one thing, accepting it was a completely and utterly different matter. Even though he had come to the conclusion that fitted with everything, even his new surroundings so scarily well that it wasn't even funny, Naruto still had trouble coming to accept he was in another dimension.

This was markedly different than the dimension that was linked by Obito's Kamui (Authority of the Gods) that Kakashi had described to him. In a way, he was somewhat relieved that it wasn't like that. If it was, he would have gone mad just being in a never ending dimension where the only thing he could see for miles where dull grey cuboid shapes of varying sizes and lengths.

At least this place had some color to it. And trees, animals, water, sky, air, food, and also most importantly, people and civilisation.

Like this place, Syracuse.

...Well, Naruto thought the name of the place was called Syracuse, it wasn't like he could read the mumbled up lettering of this place anyway. That was embarrassing. He had to learn how to read the language of this place soon either wise he would have a massive handicap when it came to trying to find a way back home. Actually, he didn't really have a clue how he could even speak or understand the language itself.

He had just simply accepted that little fact as some sort of cosmic interference or something. It made his life a whole lot easier when it could have been harder.

But first, he had a more pressing problem, a problem of the monetary kind, "I should have accepted the old man's money." The blonde grumbled lowly to himself as he walked along the bustling crowds and streets of the port town. He had almost been tempted to do a one-eighty and go back to the village and accept the old man's money when he eventually realised that none of the money he had was going to fly around here until he realised that doing that seemed rather douchey after doing everything in his power in _not _accepting the village's money, "I'm an idiot."

He needed to get some money, fast. He didn't really feel like camping in the woods and hunting for his own food again (And by that, he meant hear his clones gripe to him about his apparent laziness at not hunting his own food), he might have been trained to do that, but that stuff was for the birds. He wanted to sleep in a bed, a very comfy bed. Something that could relieve all of this stress he was feeling about his entire predicament.

It would have been easier to accept all of this if Kurama was up and about, but he wasn't. The old fox was still sleeping, he had to wonder exactly how much chakra the fox had to use to disrupt whatever had plucked them out of their own world into this one?

Urgh, just thinking about it made his head hurt.

Even as lost in his thoughts as he was, Naruto was still more than cognizant enough to move his way through the street full of people going here and there with practiced ease. Something he had learned how to do simply because it looked cool whenever Kakashi walked down the street his face buried into that smutty book of his without seemingly bumping into anyone.

That's why he was rather confused when he felt someone bump into him even though the blonde had made his move to get out of the persons way. He looked down at the stranger who was on his backside with a very noticeably exaggerated pained look on his face as he clutched onto his shoulder and rocked from side to side on the ground.

Naruto didn't make a move to apologize as he was still slightly confused at what had just happened or why the stranger was acting like a big baby over a simple, soft bump that he had caused.

"_Owww_," The stranger groaned in a disbelieving manner as his rocking came to a gentle hurt, "Oh God, I think you broke it."

Unlikely, if it was broken, his arm would have been limp and clutching his shoulder as hard as he was doing would have caused more harm than good and that wasn't taking into account all of the rolling he had been doing before.

"No I didn't." The blonde ninja returned in deadpan at the older man. He had noticed that the entourage the man had been with had moved to the older man's side whilst others had surrounded him so that he wouldn't go anywhere if he tried. As if they could be able to stop him anyway.

"What!?" One of the man's entourage's yelled in, once again, exaggerated fury, "Are you calling Aniki a liar!?" Pronounced tears where streaming down his face by this point, even though how he was able to do it was lost on Naruto, "Here Aniki is, probably on his death bed and you're calling him a liar?"

The 'Aniki' let loose a few hacking coughs as if to play even more into this death act of his, "It hurts so much..." Another cough escaped his lips weakly and unbelievingly too, "...A doctor, I need a doctor. If not, I don't think I'll be able to make it."

By now Naruto's brain had managed to come to the conclusion that he was getting played and these guys were probably yakuza types. He stopped at that thought and gave each and every single one of them a once over, 'Yeah, they're definitely yakuza.' A hand went through the blonde's hair as he looked down at the 'dying' yakuza, "How do you die from a _supposedly _broken shoulder?" By now, the commotion had attracted quite a crowd of onlookers who looked on and whispered about what was happening. Some entertained the idea of stepping in but never actually did, the entire situation wasn't their problem, it was his and his alone to deal with, until some city guards of course made themselves known.

One of the yakuza, an athletic looking man with spindly hair, dark tinted glasses and a blade of grass in his mouth stepped forward. His hands tucked into the pockets of his grey coloured slacks, "It doesn't matter whether the dies or not, what matters is that you hurt our friend here." The man said as he slinked the blade of grass from one side of his mouth to the other, "I think a little...economical _help_ is necessary. You know, for the doctor's _fees_ and everything." He finished off as he tried to give Naruto his best intimidating stare.

Naruto was unfazed. He had stared down people who could destroy the world several times over with a wrinkle of their noses, "Yeah," The blonde drawled slowly as if in thought about the whole thing, "No."

Wow, this was definitely a new dimension. No-one was stupid enough to try and forcefully coax or intimidate a shinobi back home, even the yakuza and other criminal elements that weren't ninja, ronin or the likes were smart enough to stay in whatever holes they crawled out from. Messing with someone who had been trained to kill since the age of six was just plain stupid, the equivalent to committing suicide even.

The gangster kissed his teeth somehow managing to keep the blade of grass within the confines of his lips, "Is that so?" He said as he walked towards Naruto and swung a hand over his shoulder, "Well then, why don't we go somewhere with a little bit more privacy so that we can..._talk_ things over huh? Make you see reason." He finished off as he began to lead Naruto towards an alley way, the crowd parting like the Red Sea at the approach of the yakuza and his entourage.

Predictably, the previous 'gravely' injured gangster from before was now healthy as rain as he was eagerly following behind with a pomp to his step.

Naruto just had a dull look on his face as he was lead towards the alley, "You do realise this is going to hurt you guys more than its going to hurt me?" He was rather certain about it.

The apparent leader of the motley group of gangsters snorted, "Going to keep acting like a tough guy are you? We'll see if we can't change your tune soon enough."

Naruto just sighed before letting out a shrug of nonchalance. Well, at least he tried. Not like beating the living daylights out of them was going to weigh on his consciousness or anything like that. He had far better and more important things to think about.

The crowd that had gathered around the scene watched as the blonde man was dragged into the alleyway. None of them moved to do anything at the scene and had planned on just ignoring the entire thing all together.

"Shouldn't we do something?" Someone in the crowd asked.

"Like what?"

"I don't know, call the Town Watch or something, _anything_."

A round of bitter laughter rang throughout the crowd, "_What _Town Watch? They won't or can't do a thing. Too scared of these bastards. Lad should have just paid the men."

"All we can do now is ho-."

"**ARGH!**"

A piercing scream that was more akin to a death howl cut short any chatter as their attention was attracted to the alley way where sounds of fighting could be heard, they couldn't tell if it sounded like fighting because by the screams, pleads for mercy and begging of forgiveness, it sounded more like a slaughter. They listened with rapt attention as more screams of pain could be heard along with even more pleads of mercy.

One particular sight that was engrained into their minds was of one of the yakuza quickly appearing at the entrance of the alley trying to make a run for it from whatever was going on within that side street before a hand shot out and grabbed onto the collar of his shirt before quickly yanking him back into the depths of the alley way.

Eventually, the thrashing and crashing came to a halt and the crowd just watched with wide eyes as the blonde man that had been dragged into the alley way walk out with a spring to his step whilst whistling a jaunty tune as he counted the money in his hands.

Naruto stopped his current activity when he felt eyes on him. He slowly turned his head in the direction of the crowd. His eyes panned in the direction of the alley where the gangsters were all neatly piled into one stack of human bodies, "...Yeah, they started it." The blonde said slowly. He then noticed that he still had the money that he pilfered off the bodies of the yakuza in plain sight, and he quickly shoved the stacks of notes into his jacket's pocket, "...They donated it? Yeah, they donated it to me. It was all just a big misunderstanding and they gave me the money to show how sorry they all were, really, they did. This was nothing more than a misunderstanding. Nothing fishy about this at all." He quickly said before disappearing in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a wide eyed citizenry still trying to comprehend what had just occurred.

XxX

"Does this place have ramen?" Naruto wondered allowed as he continued to make his way through the town. He now had money that had been, for a lack of better word, been graciously donated to him by some rather wayward folks that had paid for their misgivings in life courtesy of Naruto and his fists. And with that money came a question Naruto wanted to learn the answer to, "This place better have ramen." Did ramen even exist in this dimension? Oh it better had to exist in this realm either wise he was going to get angry, and an angry Naruto was one of the worst things to happen to a person if they came across him wrong.

Looking from side to side for some sort of restaurant or anything that seemed or showed signs that it would sell the heavenly food, Naruto continued to make his way through the town, wondering around aimlessly. This would have been far faster if he could read the language.

'I need to learn how to read. _Again_.' That was something he wasn't looking forward to. What if someone asked how he wasn't able to read? What could he tell them? He just couldn't come out and say that he was from a different dimension now could he? That would be just absurd and would seen see him locked up in a mental asylum or something.

Not that he wouldn't even be able to escape from such a place, even less likely that he would be caught in the first place.

Deciding to take a gamble, Naruto headed into the first place of business that looked like it would sell hot food, a small café. When he entered, he immediately stopped as he took in his surroundings, "I think I'm in the wrong place." He muttered to himself as he slowly began to backtrack towards the exit. There was no way he was going to be caught dead eating in a place like this.

Unfortunately for Naruto, it seemed as if the heavens had other designs for him, either that or they were rather bored with the quality of entertainment that had been happening in the world lately.

"Ara, what's this?" A pleasant female voice called out from behind him, causing Naruto to jump up in fright and quickly turn around ready for action. He came to face a woman with white hair and blue eyes who's age was quite hard to discern but he guessed that she was definitely older than him, probably in her somewhere in her twenties dressed in a maroon coloured evening dress with a slit at the side that showed her rather shapely legs, "We hardly get any male customers here. I wonder why though, I'm sure I do enough marketing to attract both genders." She finished off with a cute expression on her face, her index finger resting on her chin as she looked up in thought.

Naruto blinked as he looked at the woman who had somehow managed to sneak up on him and he hadn't been able to tell. Just what the hell? Was she some kind of stealth specialist or something? But she looked so harmless...and hot, but that was neither here nor there.

Naruto just narrowed his eyes slightly and turned to look behind him somewhat uncomfortably, "...Just a suggestion," He began, ready to give the woman some advice on her marketing skills since she was the apparent owner of the café, "Maybe it has something to do with all the male butlers walking around?"

The woman looked at him with a raised eyebrow, "Butlers?" She repeated before her eyes gleamed, "Ah, butlers! My butlers! Aren't they such lovely creatures? I trained them all myself." She said with a rather pleased inflection to her voice, the feeling spreading to the rest of her body if her expression and demeanour was anything to go by.

Naruto just gave her a dull look in return, there was just something so wrong with the way she had just said that, "You do realise they're humans...not dogs right?"

The woman scoffed, "Of course I know that," She said before sighing, "But it would be much better they were. And not just any dogs, but cute little puppies." Her demeanour then suddenly changed before kissing her teeth and crossing her arms over her chest, accentuating her bust, in anger, "Stupid Magic Council for outlawing the use of transformation magic on unwilling people." Even stupider Workers' Union that stopped her from putting on a clause in her employment contract about turning her workers into anthropomorphic puppies.

Naruto started feeling slightly uneasy being within the womans' general area, in fact, he felt that he would stop feeling uneasy until he left the entire area, "Yeah, okay, I'm just going to go now," He said as he made to walk past her, "...Well far away from you." He finished off underneath his breath. She looked like some kind of crazy that he didn't feel like he ever wanted to interact with or let alone eat within her eating establishment.

"Wait!" A strong grip made itself on his shoulder that wouldn't budge no matter how hard Naruto tried to make it, "I can't just be having people leave my café without at least eating something. People _will _start talking that Gehenna's café isn't as popular as it makes itself out to be," Her tone suddenly dropped several hundred degrees below freezing, stopping her blonde captive in his tracks unless he felt like he wanted to find what it felt like to be a mammoth encased in ice, "_I can't let the masses think that_." And just like that, it suddenly went back up to sunny and bright, "Now then master, why won't you just get yourself a seat and someone will be along to serve you?"

At that suggestion, the blonde ninja vigorously shook his head in the negative, "No chance. No way in hell. I'm not eating here." He was somewhere new, that meant he had to build up a reputation so people knew that he was a badass that messing with would assuredly result in more pain than gain, "I'm not eating anything in a butler's café." That was a girl thing, only girls ever ate at a butler café.

...Actually, could it be called a butler's café anyway?

"Why not?"

Naruto whirled on his feet and pointed at one worker that was serving a group of girls, "Well for starters, why the hell are they half naked!?" Seriously, they were literally wearing some shorts that were far too tight to be comfortable, some shoes and socks and a bow tie around their necks and that was it, "Is this a strip club or something!?" He finished off getting the attention of everyone in the café.

Gehenna was at a loss of words. She didn't know what to say, "S-Strip club?" She repeated, letting go of Naruto as she staggered backwards in shock before swooning and falling backwards and landing on her backside, quickly using her hand to fan herself, "Oh my, I-I don't know what to say."

"Mistress!" The male workers called out as they rushed to their boss' side quickly trying to calm her down from her shocked state.

Naruto just watched the entire theatrics with a deadpan look on his face. He shrugged and then turned towards the exit, "This whole world is strange." The blonde muttered as he made his way towards the exit. He didn't even take more than three steps in the street before finding himself lassoed, "Hey, what the hell!? Let go dammit!" The blonde yelled out as he thrashed around in his tied up state as he was reeled back into the café, "Oh when I get out of this thing I'm going to bust heads!" How did the rope even get him anyway? There was no way it should have got him. He should have been able to dodge this in his sleep, "I've been here for less than week and I already hate this place."

XxX

(Couple of Moments Later)

Gehenna sat in one of the café's booth calmly sipping some tea with the posture of a refined noble lady. She let out a content sigh once the brew had touched her lips and quenched her momentarily thirst, "There's no better tea in the world like Earl Black tea if I have to say so myself." She commented as she sat her cup down gently into its saucer. Her eyes drifted to the other cup and saucer with the same hot liquid sat opposite her, "You should drink your tea soon before it gets cold. Tea is always best when its hot if I have to say so myself."

Naruto's eyebrow twitched violently as he glared at the woman who sat opposite him, "Yeah, see, there's a problem with that."

Gehenna raised a delicate eyebrow in response, "Problem?" She asked as she looked around, "What problem? I don't see any kind of problem Naruto-san."

Another tick mark formed on Naruto's head, joining the multitudes that were already on his head, "...You see nothing absolutely wrong with this entire setting?"

"No, nothing at all. Must be your imagination Naruto-san."

"I'm _tied_ up you crazy woman!" Naruto hissed as quietly as he could as he tried to break his bindings, "And why the hell can't I break out of this shit? I should be strong enough to bust some measly rope!" It was weird, so weird. He was using chakra to enhance his strength to break out of the ropes and nothing was happening, nothing at all. No matter how hard he tried to break free, the rope just wouldn't budge by now he was contemplating going Sage Mode to free himself and then proceed to wrecking the store whilst he was at it.

Gehenna bopped him on the head in a way one would a child, "Shush Naruto-san, look you're disturbing the other customers with your volume and language." She said as she motioned towards the rest of the store were the other customers occasionally looked in his direction with a disapproving look.

"_I don't care!" _What he cared about was the fact was that he was being held against his will and nobody was seemingly going to do anything about it, just what was wrong with this place? "Urgh, why did you tie me up? Why am I even tied up? What did I even do?"

The white haired lady picked up her tea cup and brought it to her lips as she spoke, "Well, I just couldn't let you leave after insulting my high standing establishment," She said as she took several sips of her hot beverage before scrunching up her nose in distaste as her eyes turned ice cold as she gave a pointed look straight into Naruto's own blue eyes, "You still haven't apologised for that."

"For what?"

An embarrassed and abashed blush started forming on Gehenna's face as she looked around demurely, "F-For comparing my café to that of-of," She scoffed as she set her tea cup down and smoothed out her dress, "I can't even deign to say such a vulgar words."

Once again, Naruto didn't know what to make of the blue eyed woman sitting in front of him. One minute, she was warm and bright as a puppy on amphetamines and the other times, as cold and murderous like a starved lion, "There's something wrong with you lady."

"Please Naruto-san," Gehenna spoke after regaining her composure, "I have a name, it's Gehenna. I would prefer it if you would use it instead of addressing me as lady, rather rude if you ask me." She took a sip of her tea, "And there's nothing wrong with me, I'm perfectly fine. My ex-husband said the same thing to before his untimely end," She placed her tea cup down and sighed despondently at that, "If only he had been far more careful when he was leaving the house, that piano wouldn't have dropped on him and crushed his measly, pathetic little body into a fine paste of blood and bone. That was such an unfortunate accident and all I have left of him are his ashes and his wealth, such a pity."

Naruto didn't say anything as he just sat there staring at Gehenna with a calm and even look on his face. He didn't want to think about it or even voice it but the way she had described her husbands passing, it didn't seem to sound like much of an accident, or maybe it was just him?

"Right..." Naruto drawled slowly, uncomfortable and unsure of how to proceed after that bit of information, "Look la-_Gehenna_-san," He said after catching himself and the gleam in the woman's eyes at being called by her name, "I'm...sorry for whatever slight I caused you by calling out your café for what it is-don't give me that look, this is the closest thing you'll get to an apology from me," The blonde said when he saw Gehenna give her one of her 'crazy look' as he had dubbed the cold glare she gave him for whenever he talked bad about her café, "As I was saying, I'm sort of sorry for that. I blame it on the fact that I've had a really shitty couple of days and I'm hungry and in need of some ramen. That's all I want. So how about you let me go and we agree that we will never ever run across each other ever again?"

"Hm," Gehenna hummed as she let the aroma of her tea rise into her nostrils from its place being held in front of her mouth, "I get the feeling that is the closest thing to an apology I shall receive from you Naruto-san, how uncouth." She finished off with another pointed look in his direction, "But I admit my own fault in our current situation, therefore I'm willing to offer an olive branch in the form of ramen."

That immediately got Naruto's attention, "You have ramen?"

A haughty laugh escaped from Gehenna's mouth, "Please, this _is_ Gehenna's Café! The best café in the world and for that, we need every food in the world, of course we have ramen!"

She placed her cup back into its saucer and snapped her fingers were one of those scantily clad butlers appeared at her side, "You called Mistress?"

"Ah Jarvis, get us some ramen for Naruto-san here if you would please."

Jarvis took a moment to look in Naruto's direction dispassionately, "Of course Mistress." He said and just as quickly as he had appeared, he disappeared to bring the order.

Not long afterwards, Jarvis reappeared with a steaming hot bowl of ramen that had Naruto's mouth watering, which garnered another disapproving look from the admittedly, handsome and rather toned butler.

That thought alone immediately stopped whatever salivating thoughts of food Naruto had right then and there, 'I need to get out of this place,' The bowl was then placed in front of him and Naruto's eyes just stared at the noodle dish with hungry eyes, '...Just after this of course.' He then noticed something that would stop him from enjoying the dish in front of him. Actually, it wouldn't stop him, it would just serve as a minor irritant and something he figured Gehenna wouldn't like at all, "Ah yeah, I need my arms and hands to eat here."

Gehenna's eyes widened momentarily before laughing in an embarrassed manner, "Oh yes, how silly of me." She raised her index finger where small, strange purple letters appeared. She pointed the finger in Naruto's direction where the letters immediately shot off and attached themselves to Naruto's bindings which glowed momentarily before they suddenly went slack. Gehenna smiled at her handiwork, "There we go, now you're free and able to enjoy my café's delights."

Naruto blinked for a second as he looked at the slack rope, then back to Gehenna, "...Okay, what was that?" He didn't sense any chakra or anything that symbolised the use of a jutsu, and what she used was eerily similar to fuuinjutsu, although by the looks of it somewhat more flexible.

A well pleased smile appeared on Gehenna's face at the question, "Oh that? That was nothing more than some minor letter magic of mine."

Naruto had a straight look on his face, "...Magic?" Like the fantastical stuff that he once saw in that movie that had the nerdy looking boy with the glasses and the wicked looking scar? "Oh good kami..." And just like that, several facets that he had been either missing or ignoring suddenly made themselves known.

When he had fought that Bora person, he had wondered what that stupid thing that appeared in front of him was. It seemed to serve no purpose other than warn a person that something was about to happen. Was it the product of his magic or something that showed up whenever magic was used?

Then there was the thing with the villagers from Seme that kept calling out his abilities as magic. Wow, he had really dropped the ball on that hadn't he? Did he actually miss all of that stuff? Argh, seems like he still had a lot more to learn if he wanted to become Hokage. He couldn't be missing obvious things like that in the future.

Gehenna raised an eyebrow as she watched Naruto literally smack his head onto the table, "Please do watch yourself there Naruto-san," She said, her voice filled with some concern, "If you break this table, I doubt you would have enough money to pay for it within your life time." Concern for the table of course.

Naruto didn't react to the apparent notion that a table was far more valuable than him. He was still slowly coming to terms with the fact that people used _magic _here.

_Magic_...kami, that sounded so gaudy that it wasn't even funny.

'Then again, I am in a different dimension from my own. If someone had found themselves in my own dimension, they would probably think the same thing.' With that line of thought over, he simply shrugged his shoulders in acceptance of that fact. There was nothing else to do but accept that fact, it wasn't like he could change it or anything. Having finished thinking things over, Naruto brought his hands together, "Itadakimasu!" He said before digging into the dish of noodles in front of him.

Okay, he had to give it to the crazy probably murderous woman in front of him, her café knew how to make its ramen, but he wasn't about to blaspheme and say that it was the best ramen he had ever tasted. No, that title alone sat with Ichiraku Ramen.

Gehenna, for a lack of better word, watched with rapt attention and horror as she saw Naruto engulf the dish in front of her without any sort of etiquette whatsoever, "What are you, some sort of savage beast? Don't you know how to eat properly?"

At that line of questioning, Naruto stopped vacuuming the noodles to lift his head and look at the disgusted face of the matron of the café, "Huh?" He dumbly let out as noodles hanged limply out of his mouth.

"_Urgh_," Gehenna shuddered in disgust at the sight, "Don't talk with your mouth full, _or_ even when food is _hanging _out of your mouth!"

Naruto quickly noticed his misdemeanour and sucked up hanging noodles, "Yeah...I sort of lose it when it comes to ramen." He turned his head and raised his hand, "Hey Jarvis or whatever your name is, I'll have another one!" He yelled to the butler from before.

Gehenna shook her head, "You could have just rang the bell to garner one of my butlers' attention," She said as she pointed to the edge of the table where a small, ornate looking bell sat, "Instead of shouting out at the top of your lungs and disturbing my other patrons."

Naruto looked at the bell and shrugged, "Should have told me that before." His blue eyes met Gehenna's own blue eyes that were slightly darker in colour than his own, "I've been meaning to ask..."

"Yes?"

"How do you know my name?"

"Telepathy."

"Oh, you can do that?"

"Yes."

"Don't do that."

Gehenna shrugged her shoulders, "You weren't willing to give a name and I so do dislike not knowing people, especially ones that I find somewhat interesting."

Naruto didn't like the fact that he was interesting to her, "Yeah, whatever. So why don't we do this properly then?" He extended a hand over the table, "Naruto Uzumaki, I'm from...not around here." Like this world.

Gehenna raised an eyebrow and looked at the hand before taking it within her own, "Gehenna Starkley, a pleasure."

Not to him it wasn't.

XxX

(Later)

"I think I got ripped off," Naruto groused to himself as he walked through the empty, night streets of Syracuse, counting the hard earned money that had kindly fallen into his hands from the pockets of the yakuza that had tried to try something funny with him, "There's no way all that ramen could have cost me nearly half of all of my money." He couldn't really tell, he wasn't aware of what the going rate for ramen was here nor did he see the price of the ramen he had bought from the menu.

He really needed to start controlling himself when it came to his favourite food dish, but it had been so long since he had actually touched the food. One part of him, his stomach wanted to say that the price was worth it to have the delicious, heavenly food bathe within the confines of his stomach, whilst his brain was arguing that they had been screwed over by the crazy woman who had run off with their money.

Well, she hadn't run off. Naruto was confident that she would be there in the same place tomorrow if he actually (and was crazy enough) to go find her. After today, he really didn't want to interact with Gehenna for as long as possible, that woman was going to be the death of him one way or another.

Paranoid, he started turning his head around quickly, looking for anything out of the ordinary...like out of place hanging pianos, something like that.

'Urgh, for the sake of my mental health, I really shouldn't associate myself with that woman for prolonged periods of time.'

Well at least she was something of a fountain of information. A fountain that he had been able to easily turn the tap on too by merely playing into her ego that she was all-knowing and that she should share her knowledge and wisdom with the unknowing ones i.e. the begrudging Naruto. And Naruto always figured he had always been the one who had _the _ego problem, how wrong he had been.

He had learned quite a few things from the woman. He had already known that he resided in a country called Fiore, a permanently neutral nation, which was apparently the magical capital of the world. It seemed most of the mages of the world (and he was still coming to terms with the whole magic business) plied their trade in the country as members of guilds, the closest analogy he had to these guilds was that they were like the Hidden Villages of back home...just without the one-up man ship that had been so prevalent and the fact that those guilds had a governing power in the form of the Magic Council that supervised them.

What had caught his attention were than mages themselves made up 10% of the world whilst the rest of the world was compromised of people who were unable or unwilling to use magic. In honesty, Naruto didn't know what that meant.

For starters, it could have meant that magic itself was by itself, an advanced skill were only a few people could hope to use it after training and learning themselves to use the ethereal energy or that only a small amount of people born in the world were born with the natural ability to use it.

It was certainly different from chakra. Back in his own home world, anybody could use chakra with enough training. It was easier to unlock the natural energy of the body if said person did it when they were younger rather than older, but it still meant people could use it as everybody had it.

This didn't seem to be the case in this world.

Well, he didn't know the advanced mechanics nor did he really want or feel the need too. All he had wanted to know where the basics of the situation he was in, from there, he could at least make an attempt to figure out or find a way back home.

"If you're trying to tail me," Naruto said abruptly as he stopped in one of the abandoned districts of Syracuse that was waiting to be redeveloped, "You guys really suck. But its not really your fault, I mean, trying to tail a _ninja_ of all things isn't easy to do," He turned around to face down the street he had been walking from just a few moments prior, hands in his pockets, "So why don't you save me the trouble and make yourself known?"

It took a while, but whoever had been tailing him revealed themselves from the shadows and Naruto was less than pleased, "Argh, it's you guys again," He groaned as he looked at the forms of several of the yakuza he had beaten up earlier in the day, "Don't tell me you actually came back for another beating? Actually, I don't really mind, I need some cash anyway."

For a couple of gangsters that had had their asses handed to them on a platter by one young adult several hours ago, they held an air of confidence about them, like as if another violent altercation was to happen again, they would be the ones to claim victory this time.

Spotting a black eye, some cuts on his face and a busted lip, the grass munching gangster from before stepped up with a cocky grin on his face, "Oh you don't know what you're in for you little brat." He let a cruel laugh escape from his lips, "You just don't go around messing with the Great Phoenix Society and expect to get away with it. We rule this town, we can't just let something like what happened earlier today go unpunished. If we do, people will start thinking and we all _know_ what happens when people start thinking don't we? They get stupid and then they think they can fight against us. We can't be having that."

Naruto just looked at the yakuza with a lost look on his face, "What the hell are you on about? You're not making any sense."

A growl emanated from the yakuza's lips, "Maybe this will make sense." He said as he snapped his fingers. The clicking sound of his fingers echoed throughout the empty street where seemingly from all side streets, roads, alleys, rooftops among other place, some shady looking people started coming out of the woodwork like some sort of gathering for a festival.

Naruto was undaunted by the numbers as he looked around. He smirked as he the yakuza made a ring around him, "You really don't know what you're getting yourself into."

"_No_," The lead yakuza seethed as he requipped a katana in one hand, "_You_ have no idea what you're getting into, no, what you got into. I would ask if you have any last words, but I don't really care either way."

Naruto shrugged, "Your funeral." He said uncaringly as the various thugs around him either pulled out the weapons they had been carrying with them or for the magicians in the group, requipping their weapons from their pocket dimension or preparing spells, "The doctor always does say that one should have a healthy exercise after a meal...I think. Let's hope you guys at _least_ make me sweat a little."

"_Get him_!"

The order rang out before the first of the yakuza bum rushed him, holding up a large zanbatou like blade with an unsteady grip to the eyes of a veteran warrior. Naruto merely took a step to the side to avoid the large overhead swing from the warrior before moving once more to avoid a stab of the spear from behind that ended up stabbing the zanbatou wielding yakuza straight in the torso.

The first casualty of the melee had been friendly fire. The vast majority of the entire fracas had been indeed nothing more than friendly fire as the yakuza's uncoordinated attacks did more damage to their fellow yakuza rather than their intended target who was able to swiftly move through the crowds of gangsters with insumable ease.

"What the hell are you idiots doing!?" The grass chewing yakuza yelled from the back of the ensuing melee, "Why the hell are you cutting each other? Cut the blonde bastard! Cut him!" He raged and seethed, spittle flying from his mouth with every hate filled word he shouted to his minions. He hadn't even attacked any of them directly yet and he had already lost more men than he liked.

"Wow," A lazy, but extremely familiar and hated voice said from beside him, "You guys really suck." The yakuza blinked before slowly turning his head to look beside him and nearly let out a scream of shock and fear when his eyes came to the form of Naruto idly standing beside him, watching the melee also, "I mean, all of you guys against one person and you can't even touch me...or my clone." He shook his head at the scene, "You guys really do suck. Why don't you just call it a night and go home? At this rate, you're going to end up without any subordinates than actually killing me, or whatever you guys planned to do to me anyway." He shrugged his shoulders, "Just a suggestion."

"Dammit!" The yakuza yelled angry as he took a wild swing in a bid to take off the blonde's head, only to miss when Naruto moved out of the range of the swing faster than he was able to track, "Just die dammit!" He yelled as he took several angry swings with his katana.

By now, he had attracted the attention of the yakuza that were in the rear of the melee who had noticed him and had moved to intercept, none of them even trying to understand or being able to understand anyway how he was able to be in two places seemingly at once.

With the slew of new bodies into the fracas, Naruto just reverted back to his previous stratagem of letting the yakuza hurt each other rather than put the effort himself just by simply moving himself out of the way of their attacks. The way they swarmed around him and haphazardly took to their weapons and spells, it was more than likely they were going to at least hit _someone, _even if that someone wasn't the person they were supposed to be hitting.

Eventually, his tactic which had already been showing signs of blooming was now a fragrant flower fully bloomed as there were only dozens of the yakuza left standing from the original hundreds. By now, their numbers were too thin for his tactic to fully work so he decided to get pro-active.

But he was still magnanimous enough to offer the yakuza a chance to just leave and go away, whilst at the same time, taking away their wounded comrades for potential life saving treatment, "I'll give you guys an A for effort that's for sure, but why don't you just get the hint and scamper off to whatever holes you scurried from?" He then thumbed in the direction of the mass of bodies lying on the ground, "And take them whilst you are at it."

Somehow, the gangster from before had managed to go through the entire fight without a scratch, "Don't kid around you punk," He panted as sweat trickled down his face. He brought a hand to wipe said sweat away from his brow so that it didn't go into his eyes, "Why would we back down when we have you on the ropes? I can see you're getting tired."

Naruto was confused with that statement, he still had loads of energy to burn and wasn't even anywhere near being tired out, "In what world exactly?" He questioned, genuinely curious as to how he had managed to come to the conclusion that he of all people was tired. It would have taken more than a couple hundred gangsters to get him tired, "You know what? Never mind. I don't really care, don't say I didn't warn you." He said before raising his right hand, "Seriously, last chance, just surrender and save yourself the trouble."

"Never."

Naruto sighed before shrugging, "Suit yourself, Mokuton: Mokusatsu Shibari no Jutsu (Wood Release: Smothering Binding Jutsu)!" Bringing his hands together quickly into the snake seal, he outstretched his bandaged right hand forward were his arm turned into a tree that broke off into several branches that quickly went to ensnare and bind the surprised yakuza.

"He's a mage!?"

Naruto heard some of them cry out as they tried to futilely outrun the chasing branches that wrapped themselves tightly against their bodies, stopping them from moving or doing anything other than thrash around and breath.

He smirked when he heard them ask that question, "If that will make you feel better about having your ass kicked by yours truly, then yes, I am a mage." If he was going to go around this world looking for a way back to his own, he was sure he was going to find himself in situations where he would have to use his ninjutsu. So if people thought he was a mage, then why should he stop them from thinking he was a mage? It was much better than trying to explain to them the concept of chakra which would then lead on to the fact that he was an unwilling resident within their world.

Cancelling his jutsu, Naruto looked around the formerly empty street that was now littered with the bodies of yakuza. He stared blankly as he panned his eyes from one side of the street to the other, "...I'm going to need some help from some clones if I'm going to do this in a swift and tidy manner."

XxX

(Day Later)

"Well, would you look who it is."

Oh good lord no. How did she even find him? He had made sure to stay well away from the side of town where her café was. He assumed that place was her prowling ground, and anywhere where it looked like snobbish, slightly insane, rich women lived.

Naruto turned around to face the woman of his nightmares with a straight look on his face, "Gehenna..." He said slowly, his voice strained and paranoid. He was expecting one of her boy toys to suddenly wrap him in that stupid rope and she put the finishing touches with her Jutsu Shiki (Formula Technique) magic, "...What do I owe the pleasure?"

The light-haired woman let out an airy laugh as she walked in step with him, "Is it so bad to have a chat with a friend?"

"We're friends?" That was news to him. He wasn't exactly aware of when this development in their relationship had happened.

Gehenna nodded her head as they continued down the street, the two's presence somewhat drawing glances and looks in their direction, "Of course we are Naruto-san. I would only take in friends into my establishments and let them dine for free."

Naruto nearly tripped at that last statement, "Dine for free!?" He hissed in a slightly too high a pitch for a man, "If you had your way you would have taken me for everything!"

Gehenna waved him off, "Oh you exaggerate Naruto-san, but your exaggeration is quite amusing if I have to say so myself. But I do have to say Naruto-san, you have only been in town for two days at most and you're already the talk of the town."

The trained assassin walking beside her blinked in confusion at that, "I am?" Why was he the talk of the town? He hadn't done anything awesome enough to be warranted to be talked about in town or anything like that.

"Of course." Gehenna said before motioning a hand to the people they walked past, "Can't you see the looks the people are giving you? They recognise you as the man who freed this town from the tyranny of that detestable yakuza clan." Naruto looked around and did notice that people were looking at him with a look he recognised. It was the same type of look that the villagers of Konoha had in their eyes when he had defeated Pain, but in comparison, this was far more subdued.

An embarrassed blush started forming on Naruto's face as he fought the urge to preen at the attention, "Well, it was more like they picked a fight with me over nothing." He said rather sheepishly as he scratched the back of his head.

Gehenna wasn't listening as she had something of a proud smile on her lips, "I knew I did the right thing sic'ing all those awful men on you when you left my establishment."

"Of course you-wait what?" Naruto said before the full breadth of that sentence registered with him, "You sic'ed them on me!?" He nearly screeched at the woman.

Said woman just ignored him as she continued talking, a smile on her face as she nodded in approval with her previous action, "When I saw you easily defeat those rag-muffins that tried to swindle you yesterday, I knew I just had the right person for the job of cleaning up this town. I will not have some lowly scoundrels mess up my town." A wistful sigh escaped her lips, "You had me when that scream rang out from the alley. That was splendid work by the way, wouldn't have done it better myself."

Naruto had never been so befuddled in his entire life, "I don't understand. What do you mean your town?" The inflection in her voice when she had said that conveyed more than the fact that this town was the place she called home or had grown up in. It had something more to it.

Gehenna stopped to look at him with those blue eyes of hers that could change their warmth and sanity with a snap of the fingers, "Oh, didn't I tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

She gave him a wide smile that graced her beautiful features, "I'm the mayor of this town." She said, dropping the bombshell like it was nothing. She grabbed the upper part of her dress with a hand and curtsied lightly, "Gehenna Starkley, Mayor of Syracuse at your service. I humbly thank you for the service you did to this town by removing it of those vagrants." She said before walking off.

Naruto just stood there, still shell shocked by that admission before his brain managed to get everything back to order. He looked around him and noticed that some people were staring at him, "Really?" He said lowly, "Her? Of all the people in the town, why would you make such an insane woman your mayor? What is wrong with you people?" He fumed before sighing in defeat. He then started making his way towards the direction of Gehenna's café, "Argh whatever. I better get a reward for this."

He certainly wasn't just going to be used to clean up a group of criminals and not be paid for it. Dammit, he might be in a new world with new rules that he wasn't aware of yet, but he was still a mercenary dammit! If he was going to do something at the behest of someone else, he wanted to get paid for it!

"I _really_ don't like that woman."

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><p><strong>AN: Here's the third chapter ladies and gents, hope you enjoy it. This chapter was just to introduce the town of Syracuse which is going to be Naruto's main base of operations, stuff like that and Gehenna being the one who introduces him to magic. She's going to be just a supporting character in the entire story and at the moment I have an arc that involves her that doesn't come into play way later into the future. She's one of two OC's that I plan to use and once again, the other is just a supporting character.<strong>

**And with this, we finish off the prologue, yeyeyeyey. Next chapter is definitely a timeskip.**


	4. Do Fairies Have Tails?

**Dulemia: Oh sweet mother of all that's good and holy, I saw what you did there. Took me a while, but I definitely saw what you did there.**

**Morpheus Eleynar: She can be crazy-fun, just crazy-insane suits her more.**

**Blakraven66: I've done my best to hold true to Naruto's core personality traits, but give him a maturity that comes with his age and understanding of new circumstances. So he'll be different whilst at the same time similar to the Naruto we all know.**

**Disclaimer: The usual, I don't own Naruto or Fairy Tail. Each individually goes to Mashima and Kishimoto.**

* * *

><p><span>Do Fairies Have Tails?<span>

Sitting inside one of the free booths inside a certain café, Naruto went to yawn before quickly stifling it when he remembered where he was, lest he find himself on the receiving end of several glares of varying levels of disapproval, or in the extreme case, a passive-aggressive Gehenna.

Relaxing even more so than he was doing in his seat, Naruto sighed as he looked down at the bowl of soup in front of him, 'Why am I broke?' He didn't understand it at all. He should have never ever been able to find himself in the financial situations he always found himself in. Whenever he had a job, he would always finish it to the letter and maybe sometimes go the extra mile.

His eyes hardening ever so slightly, Naruto's head slowly craned its head up from the downwards look it was giving the bowl of tomato soup in front of him to glare at the other person in the booth, 'This is all her-.'

"Please don't give me that unsightly look Naruto-san," Gehenna cut in calmly as she serenely drank some tea with her eyes closed, "Whatever you're trying to pin the blame at me for, it's unwarranted," A lone blue eye peeked open to look at Naruto, "I suspect its about your current financial situation?"

"What do you think?" The spiky-haired ninja asked as he returned to the meal that was in front of him, as loathe as he was to the dish by the amount of times he's been forced to have it, "You always take my money."

"I don't 'take' Naruto-san," Gehenna calmly returned as she enjoyed the disapproving look on Naruto's face that came with each sip of the tomato dish in front of him, "It's merely you paying taxes and fees."

A sour look came onto Naruto's face as, "I can understand the taxes," He had paid taxes back in Konoha, he knew that was simply another avenue for the village to raise funds, "What I don't understand are the _fees_. What _fees_ am I supposedly paying anyway?"

"Hm," Gehenna sat her cup down as she hummed in thought before merely shrugging, "Let me see," She began as she started listing of various fees that she was talking about, "There's the finder's fee, agent's fee, damages, travel, expense-."

Gehenna was cut off from continuing by a raised hand from Naruto, "Whoa there, stop right there lady," The white haired beauty did as she was asked as she stopped listing and waited for Naruto to make his point, "Agent's fee? Finder's fee? Damages? What the hell are those?" He asked before his eyes narrowed slightly, "And don't even get me started on the travel and expenses that I'm supposed to be paying. Last time I checked, I pay for those."

A sigh escaped from the lips of the woman sitting opposite Naruto's lips, "It seems I was correct in suspecting that you never actually read the contract you signed with me did you?" She asked as she picked up her tea cup and resumed drinking the hot beverage that dwelt within its confines.

Naruto tilted his head to the side and gave her a squinted eye look, "...What contract?" He didn't remember signing any sort of contract. Oh wait a second, he remembered signing something, but he had been really, really drunk at the time, "...You have got to be kidding me."

"Ah, you remembered," Gehenna said somewhat cheerfully, "That's good. I didn't plan on reminding you anyway." She finished rather blithely with a dismissive motion of the hand.

By now, Naruto had realised that if given the chance to do something rather immoral and get away with it, Gehenna would gladly do it with a smile on her face. So instead of getting angry, he simply accepted it. He had a guess that Gehenna had made whatever contract he had signed something that was rather difficult to break or if he wanted to get out of it, he would have to pay an arm _along_ with a leg or two...and that if she was feeling generous...which was never.

Actually, with that thought, it was more than likely meant that he _would_ actually have to pay an arm and a leg. So he simply decided to do the only thing he could do at this moment in time, just ignore the whole issue for the time being and do nothing.

Kami, there must have been something wrong with him if he thought of Gehenna of something like a friend. The fact that he admitted that just showed how many screws were loose in his head.

"If you are actually actively ripping me off," Naruto said after a while as he pushed the empty plate of soup to the side, "The least you could do is give me free ramen." He suggested, trying his best, and failing, at making sure that he wasn't giving a pleading look with his big, blue eyes.

"No," Gehenna said as she quickly shot down that idea, not even deigning to laugh at Naruto at trying something that had little to no effect on her, "Free ramen? If I start giving you free food at my precious café-." She found herself cut off from continuing her tirade by a bored looking Naruto.

Naruto sighed as he rested his chin on his hand that was propped up on the table by the elbow, "Yeah, yeah," He drawled with a dismissive wave of his hand as he looked out the window onto the street outside, "People will start talking and when people start talking, they'll also want free stuff from your café and ruin your business." He had that excuse so many times over the past two years that he could recite it from memory. He sometimes wondered why he even tried.

She beamed at that, "It's so good to know that you understand," She said as she set her cup down on its saucer before her demeanor slightly changed into a more 'business' like, "And as much as I enjoy sitting here and shooting the breeze with you Naruto-san, I believe you came here for a job no?"

Naruto lazily panned his eyes in her direction, "Actually, its more along the lines that _you_ called me here."

The light-haired woman scrunched up her face slightly, "You nitpick over the slightest things don't you Naruto-san?" She asked rhetorically before sighing, "Well, I guess there is some...truth to what you have just said," Naruto had a victorious looking grin on his face, "Well, if that's how you're going to act, I suppose you don't want this job then? Seems like its going to be another month barely surviving Naruto-san." The abject look of horror that came onto Naruto's face was a look that Gehenna relished for every single second that it was plastered onto the blonde's face.

Naruto gaped for a few seconds before managing to finally pull himself together, "You can't do that. I've got bills to pay!" He then stopped and thought about what he had just said to who he had just said it too, "Argh, whatever, not like you care anyway."

"What?" Gehenna had an affronted tone to her voice that didn't seem to register with the rest of her face that kept its usual bland look, "You're my precious cash cow Naruto-san. I would never say I don't care about you, just I don't hold you very highly in my list of priorities."

"Yeah," Naruto drawled with a twitching eyebrow, "That, exactly that. That's what I'm talking about." And did she just say that he was her cash cow? Just what world was she living in? He barely had any money in the bank and its not like work was coming his way every single second of the day, "So what's the job then?"

Gehenna pulled out a piece of paper from somewhere that she slid across the table, "It's a simple job Naruto-san. Somewhere well within your capabilities I'm sure," The way she said that was slightly insulting as if she insinuated that he couldn't do simple, "All you have to do is meet the contact at this address in Hargeon."

Naruto raised an eyebrow in curiosity, "The port town?" He asked as he read the piece of paper that he had picked up and held in front of him, "Sweet, I was planning on heading in that direction anyway." He finished off as he pocketed the piece of paper.

"Another shipment?"

The blonde haired ninja nodded his head as he slid across his seat to the side of the booth, "You know it. I've been running low on my equipment anyway." He said as he stood up from his seat.

Gehenna calmly shook her head, "I swear you use the strangest of weapons Naruto-san," She said before turning to look at Naruto who was working out the kinks from his body after sitting for so long, "Hm, I have to say, you've changed from the first time we met Naruto-san." She pointed out as she gave him a once over.

Naruto was taller than he had been but that was natural when it came with time. His attire had also changed in the two years that he had been here. He wore a dark blue colored long sleeved shirt that was covered by a dark orange and black hooded poncho that covered most of his upper body and stopped slightly below his waist, black pants that were tucked into similarly colored combat boots. And finishing off that ensemble was the same black headband tied around his head with that strange metal plate with the leaf symbol that was beginning to show some wear here and there.

She for one could never understand why he kept that particular clothing. The cloth that held the metal plate had fallen apart so many times, she wondered why he ever bothered to repair it. She had guessed that it held some value to him in some form or way.

Naruto stopped stretching out his arm to look at Gehenna with a raised eyebrow, "I have?" He asked. He didn't feel like he had changed, sure he had grown taller, and his hair might have grown longer, and dare he say wiser and more mature, but he didn't feel like that was anywhere enough to be pointed out, "I don't think so. All that tea must be going to your head Henna-chan."

Gehenna's face wrinkled up in barely concealed disgust, "I would ask you would not call me by such a name. We are nowhere near close enough for you to give me such an affectionate name." And even if they were close enough, she wouldn't even allow such a thing.

Naruto chuckled quietly at the expression, "You say that, but we all know that's not true." Gehenna turned to level a look at him that told him that he should tread carefully with his next words, "Okay, okay, I'm going, I'm going." The blonde said as he edged away from the volatile lady and made a quick beeline towards the exit.

Praising himself for saving him from a tongue lashing that probably would have come his way if he had lingered for any longer within Gehenna's range after saying such a thing, Naruto took a moment to look up to the sky after taking several steps out of the eating establishment that said woman owned.

Two years, that's how long he had been here and he had yet to find a way home. The more time he spent here, the more he thought that he was never going back home. And the moment that thought even dared to peak its ugly head within the confines of his mind, he would squash it down with ruthless fury, even though a small part of his brain would agree that he was probably never going back home and that he should just accept his new surroundings.

Taking himself away from those thoughts, Naruto lifted his arms out of his poncho and pulled up his hood to cover his head, for protection against the stifling summer rays, he doubted even Konoha in summer time ever got this hot. With that preparation done, he began to make his way towards Hargeon at a leisurely place until he reached Syracuse's limits, from where he would then run towards his destination.

XxX

(A Day Later - Hargeon)

From Syracuse, the journey to Hargeon would have taken anyone else three or so days to complete, but Naruto wasn't anybody else. He had cut a hellacious pace through Fiore, taking short-cuts that weren't really short-cuts as he had raced towards the southern coast of Fiore towards the port town.

It was only when he had spotted the outer limits of the port town did he realize his folly. The fact that he had quickly made his way towards the town meant that he had arrived earlier than expected in the town and probably that his contact wasn't expecting him for a couple of days.

With that realisation firmly in mind, Naruto had something of a downtrodden aura around his persons as he walked through the town. Well, at least he could take care of the only piece of business he had in town whilst he was here.

With that thought in mind, Naruto made his way towards the harbour.

XxX

The chime of the bell that signalled the arrival of a customer rang, garnering the attention of the person behind the counter, "Welcome!" A feminine voice cried out happily before losing whatever countenance it had with the next words that were uttered from the woman's mouth, "Oh, it's you."

Naruto just laughed uneasily at the unusual combo of the greeting and following statement, "You know, if I didn't know any better, it might sound like you don't like me coming here." The blonde mused as he made his way towards the counter.

The shop owner crossed her arms over her bust as she leaned back in her chair, "I don't want you here." She said clearly with a deadpan expression.

Naruto faltered in his step before quickly picking himself up, "That's mean. Good thing I know you love your jokes Asuka-chan."

"Call me that again and I'll cut your balls off." Naruto visibly recoiled and retreated at that threat, one of his hands subconsciously moving to protect said male body anatomy from harm, wherever it may come. She smiled at his reaction and decided to go for the kill, "With a dull _spoon_."

Naruto stood there with a look that showed he was trying to think of how a spoon would be able to cut anything before deciding to discard that train of thought less he give himself a migraine, and anyway, if she said that she was going to cut it off with a spoon, it might be the sharpest spoon in the entire world then, "And this is why you're still single and no-one wants to marry you," A crossbow bolt stuck itself into the wall beside him, missing his ear by a few inches. Naruto slowly turned to look at the cross bolt before going back to Asuka, "Huh, you missed." He said with a grin.

Asuka's eyebrow's twitched as she sat the crossbow back behind the counter, "You _moved_." She strained, as if what he had just done wasn't the correct and responsible thing to do when a crossbow is aimed at you.

"What was I supposed to do?" Naruto asked rhetorically as he slowly moved forward, "Just stand there and let you shoot my ear off?" He answered his own question with another question. Shikamaru would have been proud.

"Yes," Asuka deadpanned before rolling her eyes, "Come on, stop acting like a scaredy little rabbit. I'm not going to bite." 'Unless you piss me off of course' were the unsaid words that weren't spoken but her eyes conveyed, "Come and get your shit and get out of my store."

"I can't believe you would refer to your favourite customer's owner as 'shit'," The blonde haired ninja said as he finally reached the counter but was still wary of any surprise attacks from the older female behind the counter, "Isn't that against business practice? Drives away customers doesn't it? What with all the poor service and the referring to their gear as 'shit'."

Asuka turned and made for the back of the store, "Yet _you're _still here." She said without even looking back at him. She hadn't even stopped to give him a side look at the door to say that before disappearing into the back of the store, that would have just been dramatic and had more of an effect on Naruto than she would have realised.

"Because I care!"

"No!" Asuka's voice yelled out from the back, "Because I'm the only person in the country who knows how to make your stupid shit!"

"It's not stupid!" Naruto indignantly yelled back, "It's awesome! And you know you care!"

"No I don't," Asuka said as she re-appeared from the back, holding a large box, "And stop yelling you idiot. I don't want people knowing you actually come here," She said as she dropped the box onto the counter right in front of Naruto, "That would ruin my business."

"_What_ business?" Naruto asked indignantly, seriously, what was with every woman he had something of a cordial relationship being passive-aggressive with him? What just about him attracted them to him? First Gehenna and then Asuka, couldn't he meet someone of the female form that was just a little bit nice to him? "I'm your only business."

Asuka wrapped her arms around her body as she shuddered and nearly tears pricked at the end of her eyes, "And the sad thing is, you're not far off the mark," She sighed as she got herself together, "Alright, I want your first payment two weeks from now. You know, the usual."

The blonde ninja was slightly caught off-guard by that before sweat dropping as he realised what she was trying to say, "...I'm not broke."

Asuka levelled a dull look in his direction, "...Do you honestly expect me to believe that?" She asked before raising a single finger, "You've never, _ever_ paid for any of your stuff on the day. Not even once. The day you actually do that, is the day that pigs fly."

A cloud of depression formed around Naruto's head, "It's not my fault. It's all Gehenna's, she's always taking my money." He mumbled whilst Asuka watched the cloud over Naruto's head with amazement as thunder and lightning boomed from it and rain started falling. You didn't see that everyday. And just as quickly as it came, it disappeared as Naruto pulled himself out of the funk he had found himself in, "And anyway, I bet you I could find a flying pig somewhere in Earthland." With some of the things he had seen, flying pigs weren't really out of the equation.

Asuka nearly accepted the bet then and there until her train of thought similarly went the same way as Naruto's, "Yeah," She drawled slowly, "I'm not making that bet. I'm not a sucker."

"Heh, I know of one," Naruto said with something of a longing tone to his voice, "She's quiet legendary in fact." He wondered how Tsunade and the others were doing. Did they miss him, searching for him? Or was he written of as dead?

"Uh huh," Asuka let out as she slowly nodded her head, "Whatever, now go. This little social visit is over."

Naruto shook his head, pulling himself out of his thoughts as they started turning dark. That had been happening a lot recently, "Yeah, in a sec," The blonde ninja said as he opened the box in front of him, revealing that it's contents were compromised off various ninja tools, shuriken and kunai the most prevalent. He then began the process of sealing every single item onto storage seals on his wrists and after several minutes with the last of the items stored away, he gave Asuka a small smile, "Thanks for that."

The female smith shook her head, "No matter how many times I see you do that, I'll never understand it." It certainly wasn't requip magic, she knew that for a fact. She shooed him away, "Whatever, now just go, and say hi to that crazy mayor of yours."

XxX

"Now what?" Naruto asked himself as he walked along the streets of Hargeon, no destination in mind, he was just allowing his feet to carry him wherever. It was still rather early for him to go find a hotel...oh wait, could he even afford a hotel? "I really don't like Gehenna." She was now the bane of his life. Why did he think of her as a friend again? Ah yes, because he had been an attention starved brat in his childhood that had carried on well into his teenage years and was probably going to follow him into his adult years.

The blonde shinobi wasn't really looking forward to spending two or so days in town doing nothing, waiting for his contact to show up. He was almost tempted to either race back to Syracuse and then back to Hargeon or the more violent option of going to the seediest bar in town and seeing if he could learn of anyone in the area that needed bringing in for a good cash reward.

As he thought about it, option two was sounding more up his alley, the most prevalent and attractive point to the whole idea being that there was a potential cash reward that could go a long way at the end of it. And the more that he thought about it, the more attractive it became.

Naruto stopped when he realised that he had somehow ended up in front of a door. He blinked in confusion before stepping back and leaning towards the shop sign, 'A magic store?' How did he end up at a magic store? Anything inside the store was useless to him. He didn't need magic, even the ones that had magic stored into an equipment of some type, 'Oh well,' He thought with a shrug as he pushed open the door, if he had somehow ended up here even though he had been in deep thought, maybe the fates or something along them lines had something planned for him inside this very shop?

...Not that he believed in any of that stuff.

"I wonder how much it really is," The blonde had a rather sultry voice say the moment he had stepped inside the shop, "Dandy mister."

Naruto found himself rather transfixed to the spot as he looked at the rather odd scene in front of him. Standing in front of the shop owner was an attractive blonde girl was posed rather seductively in front of the man and from the tone that he had heard her speak to the man, he guessed that she was trying to charm him into lowering his prices.

Funnily enough, this was somehow reminiscent of a particular scene from one of Jiraiya's books that the perverted hermit had forced Naruto to read in order to gain a different perspective. Not that he would ever admit to ever enjoying that particular task he had been forced to do during his two and a half year training trip with the man.

He had to wonder, what exactly did this girl want _so_ badly that she was willing to go so far? It must have been one hell of a magical item.

'**Feh, I would have just threatened to eat the man.**'

Naruto rolled his eyes the comment from his long-time partner in crime, 'Be quiet. Go back to sleep you lazy fox.' He had to admit, that it was now comforting to at least have the old fox commenting and talking with him every now and then. It had taken him nearly a whole year to recover properly from whatever he had done to free them from the space-time manipulation that had brought them to this world.

Apparently, it was at that moment that the bell that seemingly every shop had decided to ring, to notify the shop owner and the girl, that someone had entered the store.

Naruto saw the girl's frame stiffen when the sound of the bell ringing hit her ears. He could somehow make a guess as to what was going to follow afterwards.

The girl with the same coloured hair as him rigidly turned her head and body slightly to face Naruto, in a manner that somewhat reminded him of a robot's own motion whenever it moved. His view now not obstructed by shoulder length blonde hair and the odd lop-sided pony tail of hers that was held up by a puffy ribbon, Naruto could see that she had the rather pretty face along with brown coloured eyes, a slight rosy tint to her cheeks.

A rosy tint that deepened in colour and spread across her entire face when she finally turned her head to see her fellow blonde in Naruto just standing there. Said ninja had to admit that her blush could have given Hinata a run for her money at its intensity.

The two blondes just stared at each other for what seemed like eternity; blue meeting brown. That was the case until eye contact was lost, because blue had stopped staring at brown and instead, blue's attention had been attracted downwards, towards the girls chest, where a slightly ample amount of cleavage of the girls' surprisingly large bust was visible.

It took a while, but brown eventually followed blue's line of sight, "_A-Ahh_..." She stuttered with an embarrassed tone to her voice, her face becoming even redder than what should have been possible considering the colour it was already.

The shop owner seemingly didn't register the atmosphere that was wholly prevalent in his shop as he held up two fingers, "I'll bring it down by two thousand," He said with a sense of calmness about him, as if what was happening in front of him was nothing sort of the usual, "That's my final offer, take it or leave it."

The girl, like a machine that was in need of some maintenance and oiling, turned to face the counter, her hands quickly and fluidly coming to the front of her shirt in contrast with the rest of her body that was still stiff.

Naruto didn't have to guess as to what her hands were doing as the sounds of faint zipping hit his trained ears. His mind took that chance to imagine what she was doing, but instead of zipping up her attire, was unzipping it. He quickly had to bring a hand to his nose lest he find himself losing blood from his nose.

"I-I'll take it," The girl muttered in a hushed volume that didn't do anything at all to hide her embarrassment. She quickly slapped down the required amount of Jewels onto the counter and took whatever item she had bought, clutching it tightly to her chest like a precious treasure. She turned around, the bangs of her hair shadowing her eyes as she lowered her head, unable to bring her eyes to face Naruto, good thing too as she would have seen the blonde clutching his nose, that would probably have ended up embarrassing her even more so than she was feeling now. She quickly shuffled towards the door, soon reaching Naruto who still stood in front of the door, "E-Excuse me."

She had spoken so quietly that Naruto had to have strained his ears to hear her, but he still did. He quietly slid across from the exit whilst pulling it open for her, "Here." He said, thanking whatever deity that was looking out for him, if the girl had seen that he was holding his nose, for all he knew, that embarrassed demeanour could have quickly changed into anger at a pervert.

"T-Thanks." The girl mumbled as she stepped out of the store, turning robotically in the street in one direction before suddenly bolting off, an embarrassed scream escaping her lips, surprising many of the people in the street themselves as they made way.

Well, that was certainly one way to deal with everything that had happened.

Shrugging, Naruto let the door close as he removed his hand away from his nose. He turned to face the attendant, "Just a minute," The man said as he frowned before shaking his head, "That silly girl, she forgot to take her change."

Naruto didn't know why, but he felt somewhat responsible for causing the girl to suddenly bolt away from the store, forgetting her change. From the depths of his mind, he swore he could have heard a snort but decided to ignore it before sighing as he walked up towards the counter, "Give it here, I'm sure I can catch up to her."

The attendant gave Naruto a suspicious look, "How can I make sure that you're not going to take it and run off with it?" He questioned, his hands tightly clutching the money.

Naruto gave the man a dull look before his eyes panned down to the money he was holding so tightly, "...That's like two thousand Jewels change. I may be broke, but I'm _not_ that broke." Even though two thousand Jewels was still quite the amount to someone like him anyway. And anyway, if he was going to steal money, he only stole money from bad people...or people he beat up because they picked a fight with him. That was how things went with him. He never stole money from good people, or people he didn't know.

The shop owner eyed Naruto some more, as if trying to sense any sort of deception in the boys language before holding out his hand, "Here," He said as he placed the money into Naruto's hand, "You better give it to her."

Naruto nodded as he turned around and made for the exit. Stepping out into the street, he turned his head in the direction he had last seen the girl run off and scowled slightly. He would need to take to the rooftops to be able to make her out of the crowded streets, plus, being on the rooftops gave him the added benefit of a better vantage point than being on the ground.

With that thought in mind, the blonde lazily leapt onto the nearest roof, surprising many people with that show of physical prowess before jumping off in the direction she had ran off in. He quickly increased his pace when he realised that the girl might be a mage that used high-speed magic, like some of those other mages he had run into occasionally.

As he jumped from roof to roof, he started wondering if he should create some clones to help him out with this particular task before he noticed a familiar yellow colour of hair. He turned his head and saw the girl walking somewhat demurely in the street.

He had to wonder if his hair was as eye-catching as hers? His was even brighter if he had to compare.

Shrugging, Naruto leapt off the roof to land right in front of her causing the girl to walk straight into him. Naruto didn't even budge, but for her, it felt as if she had slammed into a rock wall as she stumbled backwards and fell on her backside.

"_Oww_..." She whined lowly as she rubbed her forehead, "What hit me?" If felt like something had definitely hit her. She looked up and her face immediately reddened as she saw a rather familiar face that she had only seen seconds before, "_A-Ah_...it's you..." She had to wonder why the blonde had rosy tint to his cheeks, it couldn't be because he was thinking about what had happened back in the store could he? Actually, he wasn't the only one who had something of a rosy tint to their face, in fact, every male in front of her did, "W-What?" She stuttered out, why where they all looking at her like that.

Naruto willed himself to look away against the rather loud protest of himself that had been corrupted by Jiraiya too much to save, before lamely pointing at her, "...Your legs."

She blinked owlishly and tilted her head to the side in a rather cute manner, "My legs?" She repeated quietly before looking down, and once again, her face reddened to an unconceivable amount, "_Kyaa!_" She screamed as she quickly corrected her legs so that she sat on her knees whilst pushing down her skirt to cover up her undergarments.

Could today get any worse? She honestly felt like crying.

Naruto didn't know why, but he could make a guess and he was sure that he would make the correct one in the first three guesses, he felt a lot of angry glares directed towards him...from the male population that had been gifted with the sight of a beautiful girls' underwear. Deciding to save whatever little dignity the girl had, Naruto quickly picked up the box she had bought from the magic store that she had dropped and pulled her up to her feet by the armpit.

"W-What are you doing?" The girl asked, her voice all kinds of flustered. She was answered when everything became a blur for a second and she found herself standing in a different location. She looked around trying to get her bearings, but found herself difficult to do such a thing as her head spun from the sudden change in direction and the high speed she had travelled.

Naruto just watched her stumble for a bit before she placed a hand on a nearby wall to steady herself while she collected herself. He felt sorry for her slightly, he could understand what she was going through. Learning Shunshin (Body Flicker) had been something Naruto didn't particularly enjoy. He had to deal with the dizzy moments that came with first time beginners and occasionally crashing into something when he misjudged a distance or couldn't stop himself in time.

The girl managed to eventually get past her dizzy spell. She slowly turned her head to face Naruto, "Ahaha..." She laughed rather weakly, unsure of what to do next, "Thanks for back then." She said, he must have taken her away from that location to try and save whatever dignity she had left, 'Not that it matters now.' She thought as she eyed the blue eyed teenager in front of her, who had somehow managed to see her in two embarrassing situations.

Naruto raised a hand and scratched the back of his head sheepishly, a habit of his that he's had ever since his childhood, "No problem, I guess," He said before blinking in realisation at something. He quickly lowered his hand that immediately disappeared behind his poncho, "Oh yeah, you forgot your change from, uh, _earlier_." He said as he held out the two one thousand Jewel notes towards the girl.

At the reminder of their first meeting, the girl's blushed returned once more, "Eh thanks," She said nervously as she reached and grabbed the money. Her face returned to its normal colour rather quickly as she caught onto something, "Wait, did you teleport us here?"

Naruto quirked an eyebrow at the question, "Teleport?" He asked as he tried to think of what she meant before his eyes gleamed slightly in realisation, "Oh right, that? No, that wasn't teleportation."

A confused look came onto the girls' expression, "Really? Then what was it?" Teleportation could be the only thing that she could think off that could explain how they had been able to move so quickly from one place to the other. Actually, now that she thought about it, there was another way they could have moved so quickly. Naruto found himself taking an involuntary step back when the girl clasped her hands together, her eyes and form sparkling as she looked on at him in excitement, "Then was it high-speed magic?"

Naruto blinked, shunshin was high-speed movement and he did play his ninjutsu as magic, so his answer to her question would sort of be true, "Ah, yeah. High-speed magic, high level stuff."

"I knew it!" The girl said, somehow appearing well within Naruto's personal space, clasping her soft hands over his own, eyes still big and sparkling, "What kind of magic do you use? What can it do? Wait, wait, what guild are you from?" She asked, each question she quickly fired out accentuated by her face getting ever so closer to Naruto's own.

Naruto pulled back his head as much as he could less they find themselves in a clashing of heads or something worse and even more markedly embarrassing. He could already see their little spectacle was attracting attention from passer-by's, some of them including women out in the town who held hands to their mouths giggling to themselves at the sight and muttering things along the lines of 'young love' and all that shenanigans.

"Too close, too close!" He quickly said, his face red from the comments that were being made about them.

That seemed to bring the girl out of her state before she too heard the background comments that caused her to quickly release Naruto's hands and scamper back a few feet. She bashfully looked down, as if the ground or her feet had become markedly more exciting than anything else in the world, "I'm sorry," She said quietly, the bangs of her hair covering her eyes but not hiding the blush that was still visible to Naruto, "I get a little too excited sometimes."

'That was a little?' He didn't want to know what 'a lot' was with her if that had been a little. Naruto raised a hand and placed it to scratch the back of his neck as a sign of his own discomfort at the scene and the sudden change in atmosphere. Thinking quickly, he decided to introduce himself to the girl, to at least get a name to the face, "I'm Naruto. Naruto Uzumaki."

The girl blinked before raising her head to face Naruto, her face still holding some colour of the red variety to it, "Eh, Lucy. Lucy Heartfilia."

Naruto nodded but the name had caused him to wonder where he had heard of the name Heartfilia from again, "Nice to meet you Lucy-san." That was another thing, spending more time than he liked with Gehenna had resulted in him getting some semblance of manners. He only gave the '-chan' suffix to girls he was close too or knew rather well and the '-san' suffix to those he had just met.

By the time he had caught himself addressing people properly, it had already been far too late. Someone had somehow succeeded where many had failed in beating manners into him.

"You're really into magic aren't you?" Naruto said after a while, not knowing why he was trying to keep a conversation going with the girl. Sure, it was partly out of boredom and because he had nothing else to do, and also somewhat because the girl was rather pretty and it wouldn't hurt to know her a little. He was definitely _not_ hitting on her or anything like that, he was just being friendly.

The Jiraiya hadn't ran that deep or was he even giving it a chance too.

Once again, a snort of amusement rang out from somewhere within the confines of his mind.

Lucy laughed in a self-conscious manner, "Yeah, I tend to get a bit carried away when it comes to magic. But please, don't be so formal with me, just call me Lucy," She gave him one hell of a smile, "I'm a mage too."

Naruto returned with a smile of his own, "Really? Well then, from one mage to another, hello there." No matter how many times he had said it, it was still awkward for him to say or even think the words 'mage' with himself. In fact, some part of him was still trying to accept this whole magic thing to this very day, two years after the fact.

"Hello to you too," She said before looking away in an embarrassed manner, "Well, I can't really say I'm a mage because I haven't joined a guild though." She admitted with the same tone that she was holding herself in.

"Heh," Naruto let out with an amused smirk on his face, "By that logic, I'm not a mage too."

Lucy's head snapped so quickly to face Naruto the blonde had worried that she might have given herself whiplash, "You aren't in a guild?"

Naruto shook his head in response, "Nop, don't really feel like joining one to be honest." He had entertained the thought and Gehenna had asked him why he wasn't in one. He didn't know why either, but he felt like he couldn't, once again bringing up the analogy that guilds were like the villages back home and thus joining a guild was essentially betraying his home. He guessed being a free lance ninja for hire was his way of motivating himself to search for a way home, but in all honesty, he was terrified of joining of a guild and then becoming close to the people there.

Gehenna had already somehow wormed her ugly heart into his own and although he would tell himself that given the chance and opportunity, he would gladly rush back home leaving her behind, one part of him would feel bad about the whole thing. He wasn't that callous or cruel a human.

Gehenna was...precious to him. Kami, he needed help.

And that wasn't even bringing in Asuka, his loveable but equally hateable smith.

Lucy looked at him with wide eyes once more, but this time, without the sparkling aura she had before, "Wow, so you're an independent mage? They are really rare to come across."

Naruto laughed sheepishly as he scratched the back of his head, "Yeah something like that." That old habit of his, if anyone knew him well enough, they would know that it was his tell whenever he was trying to skirt around an issue, "But I don't recommend it," He continued off with a dull look on his face, "All the good paying jobs get taken by the guilds, and that's if you're lucky to even get one. And people who commission the jobs anyway would more than likely put their trust into a guild rather than an independent _unknown _mage." He griped with a severely twitching eyebrow. Unknown his ass, unlike many of the guilds hanging around Fiore, he was efficient, efficient as all hell, didn't people look for that when hiring someone? He didn't understand how destroying several important sights and causing a large amount of property damage could at all be appealing to people that would cause them to hire guilds, guilds the likes of _Fairy_ _Tail_.

Kami, he disliked that guild. The fact that they weren't in the red with all the destruction they caused must mean they are pretty much well loaded didn't it? The world was unfair.

Lucy laughed uncomfortably as the aura around Naruto started getting darker when he started speaking about his circumstances as an independent mage, "Uhm, well, it was nice meeting you Naruto." She said as she backed away before quickly running away.

Naruto just watched her turn and run away from him, his eyes somewhat lingering below the waistline as she disappeared from his line of sight. He sighed as he scratched his head, unsettling his mane of spiky hair, "What's with today and girls running away from me?" Granted, it was only one girl running away from him, but that was still a worrying statistic. Maybe he should have listened to Jiraiya some more when it came to speaking to girls? He stopped at that thought and let it linger, "...Nah.' He thought with a mental shake of the head before he once again, let his feet carry him to wherever just to waste the time.

XxX

Lucy groaned to herself as she walked down a somewhat empty street, clutching her head to cover her face, 'Argh, I ran away from him.' She berated herself. After all he had done to save whatever dignity she had in the street and bringing her, her change to add to her small amount of jewels, she had run away from him.

She couldn't go back and apologise and part with him properly now and even then, he probably wasn't even there any more. He had probably walked off with the wrong impression of her.

The sounds of screaming in the distance attracted her attention. Lowering her hands, she noticed that a fair distance in front of her was a crowd of women, crowding around something, and judging from the rather admiring screams, it was probably some kind of famous person.

She was startled when a group of girls ran past her, "They say that a famous wizard is in town!" One of the girls in the group cried out as they ran past her, attracting her attention.

"Yeah, it's Salamander-sama!"

Lucy took a moment to blink, "Salamander?" Why did that name sound familiar? She was sure she had heard it from or recognised it from somewhere. Her eyes widened as the name clicked and her face held a look of excitement as she clapped her hands together enthusiastically, "Y-You mean the mage that controls the magic of fire that can't be bought in stores?" She questioned no-one in particular, "He's in town?"

Well, it seemed like today was her lucky day. Wasn't Salamander also a mage of the guild that she so desperately wanted to join and become a part of? Maybe she could somehow convince him to make a referral for her.

XxX

Naruto was definitely not looking forward to the next couple of days. He really should have taken his time when he had come here all the way from Syracuse. In fact, he should have just hanged around in town until the day he had to leave.

He could have saved himself all this boredom he knew that was going to come his way.

Once again, lost in his own musings as he walked around the town of Hargeon, he had been able to pick up little things that were going on around town. One of the talking points that was spreading throughout the port town was that apparently, there was some sort of famous mage in town.

Some person by the name of Salamander.

...A little part of him couldn't help but admire the epithet. He wondered what he had to do to get a cool epithet like that. Speaking of which, wasn't their a person back home that had also been called Salamander? He was sure of it. Jiraiya had said something about such a person kicking his ass along with Tsunade and Orochimaru's then promptly giving them their title of Sannin simply because they had managed to survive him.

Was this Salamander as kick-ass as the one back home? The only way he would find out would be to fight him.

And just like that, Naruto had found something to keep himself busy with for the time being.

Grinning to himself like a madman, the teenage ninja decided to track down this Salamander before something in the sky caught his attention. It was a trail of purple-like fire that led off into the distance, Naruto realised that was in the direction of the harbour, but that was superseded by the fact that the purple trail seemed really familiar, and the sight brought up memories.

It seemed like Salamander was going to have to wait, something more urgent had to be taken care off.

XxX

Honestly, Lucy couldn't help but admit that today was such a weird day.

It was barely into the evening and she had found herself caught up into the most weirdest of all situations. She had found herself in a rather embarrassing situation by a fellow mage she had come to slightly know, who then proceeded to catch her once more in another, markedly more embarrassing situation which was markedly more his fault than hers.

Thinking about both situations even now still caused her to blush somewhat in embarrassment. She really hoped that she would never find herself in situations like that ever again.

And then after that, it had turned out that Salamander was nothing more than a disgusting pig of a man who used forbidden and outlawed magic to attract females to him for attention. Was he lacking so much in self-confidence that he needed magic to get attention to him? Urgh, the thought disgusted her.

Then probably the strangest of occurrences was that boy and his pet, talking cat. His appetite had nearly ruined her the rest of her savings. It was a miracle that she somehow had enough money for a train to Magnolia.

And a dragon? Really? And they thought they could find such a creature in town and nobody would be freaking out about it? Well, they certainly did look like the stupid type.

Well, at least she could enjoy herself by catching up with all the latest news that was happening in the magic world and to do just that, there was nothing better than Weekly Sorcerer. Her eyes had immediately zeroed in on the article about Fairy Tail and she couldn't help but laugh at what they had done and the damage they had caused once again.

Her eyes turned into one of admiration with slight pangs of envy at seeing the model of this week's gravure, Fairy Tail's drawing card, the beautiful white-haired Mirajane. Lucy was confident in her looks, but even when she stared down hard at the image in front of her, she couldn't help but feel inferior.

Mirajane looked like the sort of unearthly beauty, something she didn't think she could match herself.

She sighed as she sat up on the park bench she had been lying down on, "I wonder if someone like Mirajane could be so reckless," She mused before tucking away the magazine into her bag, "How do I even join Fairy Tail anyway? Do I have to have strong magic? Do I have to go through interviews?" Despite the foreboding feeling she felt at having to face such tribulations, she couldn't help but grin widely, "Mage Guild Fairy Tail, it's the best."

"I see you want to join Fairy Tail."

Lucy nearly had a heart attack at the sudden voice speaking from beside her. She quickly turned her head and came to a peculiar sight, "S-Salamander?" And indeed it was that particular mage, who was strangely emerging from the bush that had been beside her choice of seating.

...Had he been hiding in the bushes all this time?

The blue haired, elaborately dressed man stepped out of the bush, wiping away stray leaves from his clothing, "Oh man, I've been looking for you all over. I really wanted to invite a beautiful lady like you to the party on our ship." He said as he stood facing down Lucy with a confident smile on his face.

That invitation had caught Lucy of guard, "Huh?" She let out in shock before quickly getting herself out of her stupor, "Let me tell your first, your charm won't work on me again," She said, standing up with a finger raised up in a chiding fashion, "The weak point of Charm is understanding. As long as the person knows about the magic, it's useless."

"I knew it! I knew you were a mage when our eyes met," Salamander said, that smile of his still on his face, "It's okay. I'll be happy if you just come to the party."

"There's no way I would come to such a nasty guy's party."

"Nasty? Me?"

"I'm talking about Charm. Do you really want to get popular that much?"

Salamander looked at Lucy with a one eyed look, trying his best to charm the buxom girl the old fashioned way, "That was just a trial. I just want to be a celebrity at the party."

Lucy was already walking away, "You're an idiot, not even close to being a real mage."

Startled by the sudden ignoring of him, Salamander stumbled as he rushed pathetically towards her to catch up, hand outstretched in front of him, "W-Wait up!" He called after her but found Lucy wanting as she continued to walk away from him. Quickly thinking of something, he recalled what she was talking about earlier, "You...want to join Fairy Tail don't you?"

That got her as Lucy stopped to slowly turn around and look at the older looking man. Having managed to get her attention solely back on him, Salamander straightened out his pose and cupped his chin in between his index finger and thumb, "Have you ever heard of Fairy Tail's...Salamander?" He said with a deliberate slow pause for dramatic effect.

Lucy was hooked as her eyes widened with something of a fan-like glee, "I have!"

XxX

(Later - The Docks)

Okay...so maybe it was going to be harder than he thought looking for that blue-haired, slave-trading punk. It wasn't like he had a big sign that said 'Bora, The Slave Trader', hanging around the front of some ship or anything like that.

It would have made his job easier, but for someone doing such a clearly illegal job, it wasn't so practical.

Naruto had nothing to go on apart from the fact that he had followed the trail of purple smoke towards the docks, but by the time he had reached said location, the trail had gone cold i.e. the purple smoke he had used had been swept away by the sea breeze.

Not knowing what to do, he had decided to enact both Plans B and C, since Plan A had clearly failed.

Plan B was simple. It merely involved Naruto's signature jutsu scattered about the docks in varying disguises looking for any signs of that particular idiot.

Plan C was markedly more difficult. It involved Naruto going to the seediest bar at the docks that he could find. Find a table, seat down on that table, order something and then look as hard as possible whilst eavesdropping on every conversation that he could hear in the hopes that he managed to catch a lucky break.

Much to his surprise, Plan C had been going surprisingly well, considering who he was, he had expected someone to try something with him and then that someone would find themselves on the wrong end of an ass-kicking and thus starting a bar fight.

But apparently his idea to put on his hood to shadow the top part of his face had added enough mystique, the label of 'hard-case, do not touch' and the way he walked that showed he knew how to handle himself in a fight had shown to the sailors and other patrons of the bar that it probably wasn't the best of ideas to start something with him.

So here he sat, in a bar that smelled and looked like it wouldn't pass any kind of safety and health inspection, waiting for some kind of clue to his prey. Maybe he should have sent clones to other similarly seedy bars, cast the net wider than it already was as the saying went?

Well, it was too late for that now. If he left now to create said clones, he might end up missing something, something that might be important that could relate to his target.

It just so happened that Lady Fortune was looking down on him tonight in a favourable manner.

From the entrance into the bar, two brutish look men entered the store with all the swagger and pomp one could find in such people. They walked towards one of the free tables that was coincidentally next to Naruto's.

One of the men raised a hand to signal to the waitress, "Oi wench, give us some of the strongest ale you got!" He shouted, his voice somehow able to carry its way past the cacophony of voices that filled the room to the waitress who didn't even react to the sudden name-calling. She had heard far worse in her time working at the bar and if anyone decided to get too grabby, they would learn that was a very bad idea.

The other man sharing the table with him rolled his lone eye, "What are you doing?" He asked in a slightly hushed tone, a hushed tone that wasn't quiet enough to not be detected by Naruto who had become curious at the way the man had said it, "We've got to be ready and sober for the job tonight."

"Ah you worry too much," The first said as he leaned into the back of the chair that creaked at having to hold his full weight, "It's nothing more than a little drink."

The second snorted, "If you botch up this job, Bo-_Salamander_," He quickly caught himself from saying something he should never say, "Will burn you alive. You know what happened to the last guy that nearly cost us the goods."

Even though the man had managed to catch himself with his slip of the tongue, Naruto had already zeroed in on them. Every other conversation that was happening right now in the bar was nothing more than background noise, noise that was as irritating as white noise, but there was nothing he could do about that. All he could do was concentrate on the two men sitting beside him and listen in.

And when they left, he would also leave and follow them all the way back to their ship. Then he would have that long awaited reunion with Bora. He still had a kunai to stuff up his ass after all.

XxX

(That Night - Aboard Bora's Ship)

A party, on a ship out at sea, with all the guests being female and the host was a creepy guy that used outlawed magic to garner attention and was a little bit full of himself.

Those facts alone should have rang some sort of alarm bells, but Lucy could be forgiven for the fact that she was blinded by her desire to finally get the chance to join her dream guild. So as Bora poured the rather expensive looking wine into the two glasses that sat on the table inside his private cabin, all she could do was smile as brightly as possible.

Her future entrance into the guild rested with said creep and idiot in front of her. When she was in the guild, she would forget all this ever happened.

"Don't you have other girls to attend to?" She asked pleasantly as she looked at Salamander finish pouring the wine into the two glasses.

"It's okay," Salamander said with the same confident smile on his face, "Tonight, I just want to drink with you." He uttered in a somewhat cheesy manner as he snapped his fingers, causing droplets of wine from the glasses to rise up into the air, "Open your mouth. Pearls of wine will slowly come in." He finished off as he telekinetically controlled the wine droplets towards Lucy's mouth.

The girl recoiled in abject horror at the whole thing, 'How annoying!' It was so cheesy to the nth degree that it wasn't even funny, could he not use any other kinds of lines that didn't come out even the tiniest little bit cheesy? She slowly willed herself to just go along with it as she closed her eyes and opened her mouth, 'I have to be patient. Patience! Patience!' She repeated the word like a mantra to herself.

Before the wine droplets entered her lips, she noticed something was off and immediately swiped them away. She stood up with a serious expression as she looked at the somewhat shocked Salamander, "What are you planning?" Her eyes narrowed in anger, "This is a sleeping drug isn't it?"

Salamander merely lowered his head and spread his arms out, "Oh, how did you know?"

"Don't misunderstand. I want to join Fairy Tail, but I have no intention of becoming your girl."

A dark look came across Salamander, still not looking at Lucy, "You're a bad girl. If you had just taken the sleeping drug, you won't have had to get hurt."

"Huh?" Was the only thing that Lucy could utter as she looked dumbfounded at Salamander before she found her arms grabbed from behind, pinning her.

"Oh, good job Salamander-sama." One of the men that had grabbed her arms said as he leered over Lucy's form.

"We haven't had such a pretty one in a while." The other said as he pushed away a drape that had been concealing them.

"What's going on!?" Lucy shouted as she looked around at all the shady looking men that had various cruel grins on their faces, "Who are you!?"

Lucy found her chip cupped by Salamander and was forced to face him, her frame shivering slightly in fear as he looked down on her with a cruel expression on his face, "Welcome to our slave ship. I must ask that you remain silent until we get to Bosco, lady."

The light-haired mage eyes widened in surprise, "Bosco? What happened to Fairy Tail?" She questioned in confusion.

Salamander had a casual look on his face as he looked at his prisoner, "I told you, it's a slave ship. I brought you in as merchandise in the first place. Just give up." He said when he saw that she was still putting up some resistance against her captors.

From behind her, Lucy could hear the sounds of laughter among the slavers, "You thought this out very well Salamander-sama. When girls are influenced by Charm, they will fawn to become our merchandise."

One of the slavers peered down at Lucy to get a closer look, "But it seems this one is resistant to Charm. I guess we're going to have to train her a little on the journey." He finished off with a lecherous tone to his voice, other slavers answering with cheers and agreements of their very own at the suggestion.

Lucy was shaking as the men behind her continued to speak, the subject going round the most pertaining to her fate, 'No, this can't b-be,' She thought fearfully and unbelieving that another human being could do this to another, 'How can h-he? How can someone do this?' She thought as sweat tricked down her face and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

She yelped slightly when she felt a hand feel around a bit around her thigh. She looked up and saw that the one feeling around was Salamander. Her eyes widened, he couldn't-.

"Hm, what's this?" He asked as he removed a set of keys from a belt that was tied around Lucy's thigh. He observed the keys as he spun them around lazily on his finger, "The Gate Keys huh? I see, you're a Stellar Spirit Mage."

"Stellar Spirit? What is that?" One of the slavers asked, rather curious, "We have no clue about magic at all Salamander-sama."

"Only contracted mages can use this magic," He said as he continued to lazily spin the keys from his finger, "Meaning its useless to me." He finished as he released the keys to fling them through the window.

"No!" Lucy cried out as she glared at Salamander, tears now visible within her eyes.

"Seriously Lucy," A very familiar voice, both to Salamander and Lucy suddenly spoke up, but more to Lucy than Salamander himself, "We have got to stop meeting like this," Lucy turned her head in the direction of the voice to see Naruto standing beside the window, "First it was that uh,_ magic store_, then the street and now this? This is the third time I've helped you out."

A look of absolute joy came to Lucy's face as she looked at the hooded figure of her fellow blonde mage, "Naruto!" She cried out, her tears now flowing freely from her eyes, this time, being tears of joy.

Said mage merely raised a lazy hand, "Yo," The blonde greeted as he pushed himself of the wall. His poncho shuffled a bit before his bandaged arm revealed itself, in its grasp a set of keys, "I think these are yours. From the sound of things, your magic is dependent on them aren't they?"

Lucy went to answer but was cut off by Salamander who glared at Naruto, "Who are you?" He questioned as he opened and closed his hand, repeatedly forming a fist.

Naruto's hooded head tilted to the side, "Wow, seriously? You don't recognise me? Or my voice?" He questioned repeatedly before sighing, placing his hand on his hip, "What the hell dude? I thought me and you had something special, I mean I still have that kunai I didn't get the chance to shove up your ass." He finished off with a much more darker undertone than what his somewhat chipper attitude showed.

Salamander's eyes narrowed at him. There was something familiar about his voice and even more familiar about his threat about shoving whatever the hell a kunai was up his derriere. Thinking into it a little more, his eyes widened when an episode of post-traumatic stress caused him to experience a flashback of the worst beating he had ever received, and how he had barely gotten away within an inch of his life.

Salamander hadn't even noticed that at this sudden realisation, he had started sweating some more, and his body had taken an unconscious step back, "Y-You," He stuttered, fear evident in his voice as he brought up a shaky finger to point at Naruto, "You're that boy from back then."

With a practiced shake of his head, his hood eased of his head to reveal all of his features in all their glory, "Yeah, that's right," Naruto said with a vicious, toothy grin on his face, "It's me. And I'm not a boy, I'm a man."

By now, the other slavers had drawn their weapons and had made something of a semi-circle around Naruto, "Salamander-sama," One of the slavers said, "Who is this brat?"

Naruto blinked before squinted his eyes shut, "Salamander? Is that what you call yourself now?" He asked as he stroked his chin in thought, "Well, it's markedly better than that other name you went by. What was it, Bura, Bira, Bulma," His eyes widened slightly as he palmed his fist in realisation, "Bora! That's the one. I rather liked Bulma though." He thought, his expression slightly deflated from that revelation.

The now revealed quickly raised a finger in Naruto's direction, "Kill him!" He ordered as he once again took another step back, ready to start running, knowing that his henchmen probably wouldn't even kill him.

He wasn't _that_ lucky.

At just that moment the roof of the room they were in broke down and a figure that had been the cause of opening a hole in the roof, dropped down...right on top of Naruto.

Everyone in the room just stared at the scene with a look of shock. This particular look more prevalent on Lucy and Bora than anyone else.

Bora was the first one to get his wits about him, "You," He said as he recognised the boy with the pink hair, slightly tanned skin tone and sharp black eyes. He was dressed in a sleeveless black, gold trimmed waist coat that was open and untucked, exposing his chest, white knee length trousers and a thick black wristband on his left hand, black open toed sandals and a scae patterned scarf, "You're the brat from earlier."

Lucy was second to also get her wits back, "Natsu?" She cried out in realisation before she looked on as Natsu immediately clutched his mouth as his cheeks puffed out, muttering something about how he can't it, "That's lame!" She yelled at the boy before realising something, "And get off Naruto!" She added belatedly as she looked at where the pink-haired boy was standing.

Natsu was on his knees struggling to hold in his lunch, "Who?" He asked weakly.

"Lucy," A rather chipper tone called into the room from the hole in the roof that was still being regarded with curiosity by the others, along with the already motion sick Natsu, "What are you doing?"

"Happy!?" Lucy cried out at seeing a familiar talking, blue cat...that had wings and flying. That wasn't right. They weren't there before, "When did you have wings?"

Happy dived down and wrapped his tail around her waist, "We'll talk about that later." He said as he flew threw the hole, pulling Lucy along with him into the night sky.

"Wait, what about Natsu and Naruto!?" She asked hastily as she looked down at the figures.

"I can't carry two people, let alone three," Was her answer from the tomcat, "And who's Naruto?"

Bora quickly raised a hand after them, where a familiar purple flame formed around his hand, "I won't let you get awa-Gah!" He cried out in pain as he pulled his arm down and clutched at his hand, "What the hell?" He muttered when he looked at it to see that digging into his hand from the back of his hand was a metal pointed star.

He heard a mumble and turned his attention in the direction he heard it from and saw an outstretched hand that belonged to a certain blonde man from his past. He blinked when he heard another mumble which resulted in a full blown cry, "Get the fuck off me!" Naruto yelled as he sprang to his feet, throwing Natsu of his back and face first into a wall before the pink haired mage found himself pulled up on his collar and shaken violently, "What the hell? Who the hell drops in on a person like that!?"

Naruto stopped shaking him when he noticed something was off, "...Why is the ship rocking to the side?" He asked as he noted that his sense of equilibrium was being moved to the side.

Natsu managed to gain a moment of lucidity to look at Naruto, "What?" Was all he managed to ask out before the ship found itself violently rocked in one direction, as if it was caught in some giant wave, throwing the people in the room around like ragdolls, all except for Naruto who had quickly thought faster and channelled chakra into to his feet to stick to the floor.

Eventually, the ship came to a stop and everything settled down once more, "What was that?" Naruto asked no-one in particular as he looked around, "That was just weird."

"It stopped..." A rather weak voice said. Naruto turned his head to see the voice belonged to Natsu who was sitting down, "The rocking, it stopped."

The only ninja in Earthland blinked as he looked and felt around, "Huh, how do you kow, he's right," He then looked up with a puzzled expression, "Why is that important anyway?"

"Natsu, Naruto!" Lucy's shouted as she barged back into the room, her clothing slightly wet for whatever reason, "Are guys alright-." She stopped when she saw the expression that was on Natsu's face.

Natsu glared in the direction of Bora, "Are you a mage of Fairy Tail?" He questioned, his tone leaving no room for messing around.

Bora raised an eyebrow as he rubbed his chin, "What about it?" He asked as he signalled his men to get him, suddenly confident about his chances of victory, either that, or he had forgotten that Naruto was standing in the rear of Natsu just watching the proceedings.

"Let me get a good look of your face," A pronounced vein became clearer on Natsu's head as he glared at Bora, seemingly not paying attention to two of the slavers that were closing in on him. With practiced ease, Natsu immediately smashed one head of the slavers into the other with a single hand, "I'm Natsu of Fairy Tail!" He declared garnering looks of surprise from Lucy and Bora and only a raised eyebrow from Naruto, "And I've never seen your face before."

"Fairy Tail!?" Lucy all but screeched, "Natsu is a mage from Fairy Tail!?" She continued as she noted the stylized tattoo of a fairy on his shoulder with a pronounced tail and outstretched wings.

Lucy hadn't been the only one to see that mark as the slavers had seen them and were now panicking as they realised the gig was up. So panicked that they revealed themselves that Salamander's real name is Bora.

"Bora of Prominence," The blue tomcat standing beside Lucy said, seemingly reciting from memory, "He was banished from a mage guild called Titan's Nose several years ago."

"Ah!" Lucy let out in surprise, "I've heard of him. He supposedly carried out several thefts with magic and was banished!"

Natsu had an enraged look on his face as he gnashed his teeth, "I don't care if you're a bastard or good person, but I won't forgive anyone who uses our name!"

"Whatever, you're just a noisy brat!" Bora declared as he released a wave of purple fire by thrusting his hand forward in Natsu direction.

The flame engulfed Natsu and would have engulfed Naruto who was standing a little ways behind him if he hadn't quickly moved to the side to join Lucy and the talking cat, "Yikes, that was close," Naruto mumbled, surprising Lucy at his sudden appearance beside her as he dusted himself off, "Don't know about the other guy though."

"Natsu's fine."

Naruto bent his body forward and peered past Lucy to look down at the blue cat, "Eh, you sure about that little guy? That's fire right there. People get hurt when they're burned, even by funny looking fire." The cat merely nodded and pointed in the direction of the fight. Naruto turned his attention towards the fight and was rather pleasantly surprised when he saw the boy named Natsu munch down on the fire that had just been used to try and kill him like it was a late night snack, "Well, that new." He admitted, somewhat impressed. He could spit fire, eating it? That was a whole new ball game right then and there.

"Fire, did he just eat fire!?"

"Fire won't work on Natsu." Happy...happily shared with everybody present.

Lucy was having a hard time believing what she had just been made to see, "I've never seen such magic!" She said, her face riddled with sweat and her eyes wide and amazed.

"Now that I've eaten, feel my power!" Natsu declared as he inhaled deeply, "Here I come!"

Apparently, the feat that Natsu had just pulled off had caused some of the slavers brains to start working as they put two and two together. With that equation, a realisation slowly dawned upon them, "Rosy hair and scales like a scark," One muttered as he dumbly pointed at Natsu, "No doubt, he's the real-." He never got to finish his sentence as he was sent flying away by Natsu who had spit out a wave of flames from his mouth.

But it didn't matter as Lucy had been more than obliging enough to finish off his train of thought, "-Salamander..." She said dumbfounded. To think the boy she had been eating with just a few hours ago was such a well known mage, she didn't really know what to say.

"Tch," Naruto was than amused at the scene in front of him. That little utterance of his garnered the attention of Lucy and Happy who turned to look at him, missing the final portion of Natsu's assault on a terrified Bora, "Why did he got and take away all the fun? He could have at least left the henchmen to me." He mumbled angrily to himself. He had boarded this ship expecting to kick some ass goddammit, instead, some random kid ended up dropping on his head and then went on to beat the guy he wanted to beat _and_ his underlings, leaving him with nothing to do.

Talk about a waste of time.

He _really_ didn't like Fairy Tail.

"So what kind of magic is that anyway?" Naruto asked, rather interested in the boys' abilities. He hadn't ever come across such magic in his time in Fiore, even though he knew there were many magics in the world.

"Dragon Slayer Magic." Happy was more than willing enough to answer, completely missing out on the disbelieving look Lucy had on her face, "Igneel taught it to him."

"The dragon he's searching for?" Lucy asked with a shocked expression.

"Aye."

Naruto shrugged and simply accepted it, "Huh, nifty. But there's something that's been bugging me," The blonde said slowly as he stroked his chin, "Isn't he overdoing it a little?" He asked as he pointed to Natsu who was somehow swinging one of the ships masts around like a baseball. He had to admit he was sort of impressed.

"Ah!" Lucy cried out as she looked around their setting, "The port, its all destroyed!"

"Aye."

"Don't 'Aye' me!"

"What's all this ruckus!?"

Lucy's attention was attracted to the third unfamiliar shout and her eyes widened, "The military!" She cried out before finding herself pulled on her arm, "Huh?"

"We're running!" Natsu cried out as the military chased after them.

"Why me!?" The distressed young girl cried out before noticing something, or someone who was missing with this entire setting, "Wait, where's Naruto!?" She was starting to get the feeling that she would be saying that for a lot of her time in the future.

Natsu either didn't hear her question or didn't particularly care, "You want to join Fairy Tail right?" He asked with a grin, "Then come with me!"

Lucy smiled as she now actively ran away from the law with him, "Okay!"

XxX

Naruto watched from atop an adjacent rooftop at the group of three mages run away, chased by the soldiers. The blonde had noticed them coming their way from the corner of his eyes and immediately decided to skedaddle. If Gehenna had learned that he had been arrested by the military, she would either never let it die, or wouldn't bother paying for his bail.

Or even worse both.

With a sigh, Naruto turned his attention towards the port where the slavers were being apprehended, along with a belligerent Bora who was trying to talk his way out of it, excuses along the lines of that he was forced into it being one of many.

Naruto idly flipped a kunai in his hand in the air, "...I'm never going to get the chance to stick this thing up his ass am I?" He had been deadly serious with that threat. He still intended to carry it out the next chance he got. He had a reputation to keep.

With another sigh, he leapt off towards the bar from earlier. As seedy as it was, its going rates for rooms was well within his price range and he wanted to sleep in...something that resembled a bed tonight.

When he got the chance, he was so going to horde every single cent of money he got from this job.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Four in the morning and I'm rocking it. Had to stop for a couple of minutes to stop two of my housemates and friends from throwing down right inside the kitchen...where all the sharp things are. I think I did the right thing considering everything else.<strong>

**They will be thanking me in the morning, I just know it.**

**Feh, best of friends, fighting over a girl? Pathetic. They should be like me, more social shut-in than outgoing...something.**

**I definitely know that I'm going to have to deal with that in the morning. Urgh, sometimes, there's too much testosterone in my house. Maybe I should live with my females friends next year? The thought is tempting.**

**Well, leave a review, or a follow, whatever floats your boat mate.**

**Raiden out.**

**And I apologise for the name change to the story again. This is the last time, I swear. A Ninja's Tale sounds way better, had to stop myself from making it A Ninja's Tail...that would give people the wrong impression about how the story would branch out in the future. **

**So once again, sorry.**


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